For the better part of the past quarter century, the New York Yankees have controlled the nation’s largest media market. This is obviously due to the team winning five World Series titles since 1996. It also doesn’t hurt that the New York Mets have had only nine winning seasons during that span.
You have to go back to the Mets run to the title in 1986 for the last time the stepsister of New York City baseball was on the same playing field as the Yankees when it comes to local television ratings.
Until this year.
According to the NY Times, the Yankees no longer control the local television market:
Through Tuesday, Mets games this season on SNY were drawing an average of 253,339 viewers for each game, up by 47 percent from the same time last season,” the paper reports. “At YES, Yankees viewership had tumbled by 21 percent, to 267,000.
It might be a small sample size, but the numbers are stunning. And a recent chart by Business Insider gives us a visualization of the dramatic shift.
When looking at the products on the field, this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. Heading into Saturday’s action, Terry Collins and the Mets boasted the best record in baseball at 13-4. And despite some recent solid play, the Yankees sit at 10-7 on the year.
More than that, it has become readily apparent that the Mets are just the more entertaining team. With youngsters such as Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom and Travis d’Arnaud to call their own, this team has a ton of upside.
As it relates to the Yankees, the same thing can’t be said. Following the retirements of Mariano Rivera and Derek Jeter over the past two years, the championship days are clearly in the past. And while the Yankees are attempting to build a strong farm system, their Major League club still relies more on outdated and over-the-hill veterans to compete with the big boys in the American League East.
Unless something drastically changes in New York, it’s likely that the Mets will take over the local television market in the not-so-distant future. That in and of itself was unimaginable just a few short years ago.
Photo: USA Today Sports