The inaugural “KayRod” alternate broadcast for “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN2 kicked off on Sunday, April 10 during the Yankees—Red Sox game.
The show, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Michael Kay, brought in around 264,000 total viewers, becoming the most-viewed alternate baseball broadcast of all-time. The main broadcast on ESPN, on the other hand, saw around 2.1 million viewers. “KayRod” accounted for around 10.7% of the total viewership on Sunday night.
This percentage is around the same amount of viewers the “Manningcast” on ESPN2 during the 2021 NFL season. The Manning brothers, on average, saw 1.58 million viewers per week for “Monday Night Football,” while the ESPN broadcast brought in around 14.8 million viewers per week.
So, even though “KayRod” saw a much smaller amount of viewers than the“Manningcast” typically did, ESPN’s senior VP, production and remote events Mark Gross isn’t focused on just the ratings.
“Sure, everybody is going to immediately look to the ratings on Monday morning,” Gross said, via Yahoo!Sports. “I probably won’t, to be honest with you. I think [what we’ll look at] when we get done with a game on Sunday night, is how much fun do we think we had, and how much information and insight do we think we imparted to the audience.”
Kay emphasized that the “KayRod” show isn’t wanting to be compared to the “Manningcast,” that the two shows are completely different.
“This is going to be its own thing: Two people who love baseball talking about the game in front of us,” Kay said. “I thought the ‘ManningCast’ was great. If I could think that we could improve on it, it’s just going to be different, and I think we’re going to pay a little bit more attention to the game. Sometimes the game became secondary with the ManningCast.”
Right now, “KayRod” is scheduled for eight Sundays this season so far. The next show will take place on Sunday, April 17 during the Braves vs. Padres game.
