David Horst celebrates his goal against the Seattle Sounders on June 24.

(Photo by Brent Wojahn, The Oregonian)

MLS finished its regular season with a gain in audience across ESPN/ESPN2 and also saw a big jump for its package of games on NBC Sports Network compared to the same package on Fox Soccer last season.

ESPN/ESPN2 finished the season with an average of 311,000 viewers for its games, up 6.5 percent from 292,000 last year. The gains reflect a large number of games moving to ESPN this season.

During past seasons, MLS games have primarily aired on ESPN2.

The nets' average audience dipped during the second half of the season, as no MLS telecast on ESPN or ESPN2 averaged more 300,000 viewers. The large majority of those games began at 9 p.m. ET or later.

ESPN's June 24

game was tops among game audiences with 888,000 viewers, marking the league's third-best regular-season cable audience ever, behind only the inaugural MLS match in 1996 (D.C. United-San Jose Clash) and a New England Revolution-D.C. United match in 1998. The Timbers-Sounders game got a big boost from its lead-in telecast — an Italy-England Euro 2012 quarterfinal — which went to penalty kicks before handing off to MLS.

NBC Sports Network aired 40 MLS regular-season games during its first year as an MLS TV partner, averaging 125,000 viewers. That figure is up 79 percent from Fox Soccer's package of games last season (70,000 viewers).

The net's top telecast this season was a

game on Aug. 5, which drew 405,000 viewers. That game was boosted by the net's lead-in coverage featuring the

.

Meanwhile, MLS aired three regular-season games on broadcast TV this season for the first time since 2002. However, those NBC telecasts did not draw a particularly large audience. NBC averaged a 0.4 rating and 521,000 viewers for those games.

-- This article originally appeared on SportingNews.com