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Red Sox Moving Start Times Back To 7:10 PM At Fenway Park

BOSTON (CBS) -- Last year was a rough one for Red Sox fans. Not only did they have to suffer through seeing a 24-36 season, but they also had to stay up late to watch it.

While their on-field success in 2021 is yet to be determined, fans can at least rejoice that those late 7:30 p.m. start times at Fenway Park will become a thing of the past.

Both The Boston Globe's Julian McWilliams and MassLive's Chris Cotillo shared the news on Twitter on Thursday.

This news was expected. Red Sox president and CEO Sam Kennedy admitted at the end of last season that the 7:30 p.m. start times in 2020 was a swing and a miss.

The team moved start times to 7:30 p.m. last year in order to "capture the largest television audience possible" in a season where fans were not allowed to attend games.

Red Sox ratings dropped significantly in 2020, dropping 58 percent from the year before. Whether the product on the field was more to blame than those later start times is debatable. But the team is at least eliminating one of those factors for the 2021 season.

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