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Major League Baseball’s (MLB) second ‘Field of Dreams’ game brought in more than 3.1 million viewers for domestic broadcast partner Fox, the US network has confirmed.
The special ‘throwback’ game on 11th August could not quite match the drama of the 2021 edition, which saw eight home runs, including Tim Anderson’s two-run walk-off, and scored more than six million viewers.
MLB later confirmed the Chicago White Sox’s 9-8 win over the New York Yankees was the most-watched regular-season game on any network since 1998.
Fox said the Chicago Cubs’ 4-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds still marked the most-watched regular-season MLB game on any network this year, with the audience peaking at 3.46 million.
Despite the evident popularity of the Field of Dreams game, which is staged near the site for Kevin Costner’s 1989 baseball film of the same name, MLB has not guaranteed it will return in the future. Go the Distance Baseball, the owner of the Iowa venue, is undertaking development work at the site next year which rules out the Field of Dreams event for the 2023 season.
“It’s a lot going on,” Frank Thomas, the Baseball Hall of Fame member and Go the Distance Baseball controlling owner, told the Des Moines Register ahead of the 2022 game. “They don’t want to come back if the stadium’s not prepared.”
