TV ratings for Taney Dragons are out of the park
The Philadelphia Little League team is putting up big numbers on ESPN.
Philadelphia’s phenoms, the Taney Dragons, are apparently popular all over the country.
Last night's thrilling come-from-behind walkoff victory over Pearland, Texas drew the biggest numbers in the Little League World Series so far, a 1.5 rating in the overnight calculations. Just to put that in a little perspective, it's the highest rating for a non-championship Little League game on ESPN2 since they started trackling that audience in 2001. It's more than twice the viewership of the comparable game last year. And don't forget, it came on ESPN2, a channel that traditionally gets significantly lower ratings than ESPN's flagship.
In fact, the ratings for Taney's Sunday night victory were 200 per cent higher than the average numbers for LLWS games on ESPN2.
The second most watched game of the Series so far immediately preceeded the Dragons' win. Mexico vs. Japan drew a 1.2 rating. But it was bolstered by the fact that it aired on ESPN's primary feed in a far less competitive time slot. And it was still lower than last year's elimination game.
Care to guess the third most popular game in the LLWS so far? Taney's Friday afternoon win over Nashville Tennessee. It pulled a 1.0 rating, which is 35 per cent higher than the average of all the other seven games on the channel
Locally, the numbers are eye-popping. Last night's game did a 6.7 rating in the Philadelphia market. Those are NFL stats, folks. No game in any market this year on the sports channels has drawn like that.
ESPN is projecting record ratings for Taney's Wednesday night game against the bombers from Las Vegas Nevada. Go, Dragons!
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