Royals TV ratings are up 15 percent on Fox Sports Kansas City

A year ago, the Royals had the highest local TV ratings in baseball.

This season, the numbers have been even better.

Through Sunday, the Royals have averaged a 13.8 household rating (124,000 households) for their games on Fox Sports Kansas City, according to Nielsen Media Research. That’s an increase of 15 percent over the first 16 games last season. Of the 16 games shown this year, 15 were the highest-rated program that day in Kansas City, the network said.

According to FSKC, the Royals are on pace to have the best April rating for any MLB team since the Mariners in 2002 (15.6). The network said that Royals’ local-market TV ratings this year are the best in baseball.

FSKC said Royals games on its network are the highest-rated regular prime time program in the Kansas City market in 2016, finishing ahead of “NCIS,” “Dancing With The Stars,” and “The Big Bang Theory.”

Here is an example of the Royals’ popularity: Their 4-2 win over the Orioles on Friday was the second-best rating ever for a Royals game on FSKC (17.2). FSKC noted that 17.2 rating beat Kansas City’s eight over-the-air stations combined in prime time (16.7).

FSKC said the highest-rated Royals game on its network was April 26, 2015, which had a 17.3 rating. That was the final game of a series in Chicago against the White Sox in which the teams had been in a brawl earlier in the series.

This story was originally published April 27, 2016 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Royals TV ratings are up 15 percent on Fox Sports Kansas City."