Netflix gutted out a ratings victory over its traditional TV rivals last week, as the streamer’s coverage of the Opening Day Yankees-Giants blowout put up bigger numbers than the season’s first outings on NBC and Fox.

According to Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel tallies, Netflix’s presentation of New York’s 7-0 win averaged 2.97 million viewers last Wednesday night (March 25), missing the 3 million mark by just 32,000 impressions. Of those who streamed the Oracle Park opener, 1.38 million, or 46.5%, were members of the adults 18-49 demo.

Netflix’s first foray into its MLB partnership edged the NBC broadcast network’s Thursday night presentation of the Dodgers’ rough handling of the Diamondbacks, which averaged 2.74 million viewers. While Nielsen does not measure Peacock deliveries, NBC Sports said its combined broadcast and streaming average came in at 3.2 million viewers. (Thus, Peacock accounted for 14.4% of the company’s overall impressions.)

While Peacock’s demo deliveries were not disclosed, NBC’s old-school broadcast platform averaged 749,000 adults 18-49, as viewers in the dollar demo accounted for 27.3% of the overall TV audience. As it happens, NBC’s ratio was remarkably similar to that of Fox, which opened its 2026 MLB campaign Saturday night with 2.59 million viewers—of whom 724,000, or 27.9%, were fans in the advertiser-coveted age range.

Most markets saw Fox’s Joe Davis and John Smoltz cover the third game of the Yankees-Giants series, although affiliates in the Southeast and the dead center of the country carried the Royals-Braves feed.

One of the most desirable characteristics of the U.S. streaming platforms is how much younger their audiences skew when compared to TV viewers. For example, Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football last season served up an audience with a median age of 49.4 years, or nearly seven years younger than the NFL’s linear TV average (56.2). At season’s end, the median age of the broadcast primetime audience was a hoary 64.4 years; per Nielsen, adults under 50 account for a mere 12.2% of the weekly deliveries for the 53 scripted series currently airing on the Big Four networks.

If Netflix can be said to have won the Nielsen battle (Peacock’s firewalled deliveries are measured by Adobe Analytics), the streamer didn’t make a killing with its Opening Day ad sales. As was first reported by Puck’s John Ourand, Netflix had to free up a good chunk of its in-game inventory for makegoods, a palliative measure necessitated by under-deliveries for its Christmas Day NFL doubleheader. While the overall reach was none too shabby, with Netflix averaging 23.7 million viewers across both games, media buyers said the streamer missed the mark on its 18-49 guarantees by some 1.7 million viewers.

Then again, with a market cap of about $405 billion, last week’s audience-deficiency shuffle isn’t about to send Netflix to the poorhouse. The streamer is coughing up some $150 million over the next three years for the rights to carry a total of nine sessions of baseball, a bare bones roster that includes the annual opener, the Field of Dream games formerly hosted by Fox and the Home Run Derby.  

Discounting the COVID-delayed 2020 MLB opener, which was played on July 23 of that year, Netflix’s first at-bat marks the biggest turnout for the league’s first official game since the Cubs and Cardinals kickstarted the 2017 campaign in front of 3.62 million ESPN viewers. (Played in front of a virtual crowd of digitized “fans,” the late Yankees-Nationals launch in 2020 averaged 4.01 million viewers. ESPN’s telecast was cut short by rain in the top of the sixth inning.)

Despite baseball’s strong showing last week, MLB finished out of the top 10, with the men’s March Madness tourney on CBS and TNT Sports claiming nine of the biggest sports events for the period spanning March 23-29. CBS’ coverage of Sunday’s wild UConn-Duke game averaged a tournament-high 13.4 million viewers, topping the Friday St. John’s-Duke Sweet 16 outing (9.37 million viewers). ABC, meanwhile, snapped up the No. 10 spot as its presentation of the women’s Elite Eight matchup between Notre Dame and UConn drew 3.08 million viewers on Sunday afternoon.

To date, the men’s tourney is averaging 10.3 million viewers per window across CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, which marks a 9% gain versus the analogous stage in 2025, and the biggest turnout since 1993. As always, it’s worth noting that sports TV deliveries have improved across the board since Nielsen ushered in its new Big Data methodology last fall, a currency enhancement that includes a more comprehensive out-of-home measurement scheme.