St. Louis City SC pulls small numbers for broadcast of postseason game

City SC, the upstart St. Louis entry in Major League Soccer, has had a much better performance in the standings than in conventional television ratings.

The expansion club miraculously won the Western Division title, at odds as high as 50-1 at the area’s legal sportsbooks, and all its matches were streamed on Apple TV platforms. That company does not release viewership figures, so there is no telling how many people watched the team play that way.

However, we do know the numbers for the three City regular-season contests and one playoff match that also were shown on more traditional TV channels (one a Fox network offering that aired locally on KTVI, Channel 2, and the others on cable’s FS1.). The KTVI telecast was seen in 3.8% of the market, a decent-but-not great figure for a significant local sports event, and the FS1 regular-season ratings were lower — 1.35 and 1.1.

The team made its playoff debut last Sunday and the local TV rating was a ho-hum 2.1 figure (on FS1) that undoubtedly was affected by Kansas City building a quick 3-1 lead en route to a 4-1 victory in a game that had a late starting time and didn’t end until after 11 p.m. The rating for the last half hour fell to 1.6.

Again, the total viewership number for Sunday’s match remains a mystery because it also was streamed on tight-lipped Apple. It was the opener of a best-of-three series that continues at 4 pm. Sunday in Kansas City, Kan., which is to be exclusively streamed on Apple’s MLS package that requires a separate subscription — not merely an Apple account.