Indians break STO ratings record
September 15, 2017 12:02 pm
The Tribe's 10-inning win over the Royals on Thursday night — victory No. 22 in a row — generated an average rating of 20.44 in the Cleveland market. That's the largest ever for a Tribe broadcast on SportsTime Ohio, beating the 2017 home opener (a 19.58 rating) by almost a point.
Thursday's game was watched by 306,000 homes in the Cleveland market, and it peaked at 27.96 rating and 419,000 homes in the final 15 minutes.
STO has broadcast 19 of the 22 wins during a streak that is the longest in baseball in 101 years (or all-time, depending on your view of the 1916 New York Giants). The average rating of the 19 broadcasts is a whopping 10.66.
Wait, there's more: Five of the 10 highest-rated Tribe games of the season have occurred in the last seven contests, and those seven have a ratings norm of 14.19.
Indians ratings in September are averaging 11.45, a 55% increase from the September norm at this point in 2016, and the season average is up 28% year-over-year (to 8.16).
The Indians will finish the year with their best TV ratings since 2001, and they'll reach 2 million in attendance for the first time since 2008.
(So, please, stop saying Cleveland doesn't support the Tribe.)
September 14, 2017 12:05 pm
The TV ratings
The Indians have MLB's second-best local TV ratings, and the Tribe is pretty much guaranteed to finish in baseball's top five for the third time in four years.
On Sept.6 — win No. 14 during the streak — the Tribe drew a 14.9 rating and 23 share on SportsTime Ohio. That was the largest-ever rating for an STO-exclusive broadcast, and the best for an Indians game that aired only on a regional sports network since 2005 (a 15.1 rating on Fox Sports Ohio for a Sept. 30 game against the White Sox, with the Tribe battling for a playoff spot).
Six days later, STO easily topped that number, with a 16.67 rating and 250,000 households in the Cleveland market, for the Indians' 2-0 win over Detroit — the Kluber gem that drew 24,654 at Progressive Field for win No. 20 in a row.
Prior to Wednesday afternoon's win over Detroit, STO's previous six broadcasts had posted an average rating of 13.5, with each posting at least an 11. The Tribe's September ratings were averaging 10.85, which was a 50% jump from September's average at that point in 2016. And the Wednesday game, with many of us "working," generated a 9.08 rating, which is monstrous for a weekday afternoon broadcast.
The frenzy of the streak has brought the Indians' ratings average to 8.1, which is a 27% year-over-spike and 1.6 ahead of last year's norm of 2016. The latter number, a 6.5 average, was the best in 11 years, and this year's norm will wind up being the best since 2001 (9.94).
The two takeaways from all that data: Clearly, there's a ton of interest in the Tribe, and you don't need a packed house at Progressive Field every night to prove it.
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