While the Arizona softball team’s loss to Baylor in last weekend’s Super Regional was painful, at least it was good TV.
The three contests at Hillenbrand Stadium were among the highest-rated Super Regional games on ESPN, which is showing the entire postseason on its family of networks.
The Arizona-Baylor game on Saturday night received the second-largest viewership of the Super Regional round, with 764,000 viewers on ESPN. That also ranked No. 8 among all shows on ESPN for the week.
The most-watched Super Regional was Oregon-Kentucky (805,000) earlier that night.
Game 3 in Tucson, when the Bears rallied to in the seventh inning to eliminate the Wildcats, was the most-watched program on ESPN2 for the week, drawing 694,000 viewers.
The first game of Arizona-Baylor series draw 239,000 viewers.
Softball has been good for ESPN. The 26 Super Regional games drew an average of 458,000 viewers, an increase of 24 percent from last year, according to awfulannouncing.com.
