As a baseball fan I know it’s silly to get wrapped up in ratings comparisons to other sports–baseball is dying! blah, blah, blah–but as a Minnesotan who actually went to a bar Monday night to watch the 1-4 Vikings and 0-6 Giants play what has to be one of the worst Monday Night Football games of all time … well, this made me sad:
Via @paulsen_smw: The Giants/Vikings MNF game had a higher overnight rating than Game 1 of the World Series.
— Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) October 24, 2013
I can’t imagine sticking through more than like 15 minutes of the MNF game if you weren’t a Minnesotan or a New Yorker, and even my group of Vikings fans at the bar pretty much gave up paying attention by the third quarter. And yet … more people watched than tuned in for Game 1 of the friggin World Series. Oh well.
UPDATE: So apparently those initial reports were a bit off. I’m now told that Game 1 averaged 14.4 million viewers, compared to 13.2 million for MNF. Doesn’t really change my overall point a ton, but it’s less sigh-inducing if nothing else.
