The Braves resume play after the All-Star break with their local TV ratings at a five-year high.
The Braves’ 91 telecasts on Fox Sports South and Fox Sports Southeast before the break averaged a 3.09 rating in the Atlanta TV market, up 51 percent from a 2.04 rating through the same number of games last season.
The average local TV audience for Braves games this season is about 75,700 households in the Atlanta market, compared to about 49,900 at this point last year, according to Nielsen figures.
Despite the improvement, the Braves’ local TV ratings remain 26 percent lower than at this point in the 2013 season, when the team last won the NL East championship and last finished with a winning record.
According to SportsBusiness Journal’s annual midseason studies of MLB ratings, the Braves averaged a 4.2 rating in the first half of the 2013 season and dropped to 3.0 in 2014, 2.03 in 2015 and 1.35 in 2016.
The Braves’ 51-percent ratings increase this season, compared with the same point in 2017, is the second largest among MLB teams, trailing only the Los Angeles Angels’ 74-percent jump (to a still-lowly 1.65 rating) in the L.A. market, according to an SBJ analysis.
The St. Louis Cardinals had MLB’s highest local TV rating at the All-Star break this season (6.76), followed by the Cleveland Indians (6.29), Boston Red Sox (6.19) and Milwaukee Brewers (5.14), the study showed. The average for all teams was 2.98.
The rating represents how many households, out of every 100 in the local market, watch a team’s games on average.
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