The Dodgers vs. Blue Jays World Series boosted viewership in Japan and Canada
What’s different about this year’s World Championships? The New York Yankees are not here, the Toronto Blue Jays are.
For Major League Baseball, this represents an opportunity.
On the eve of the World Series Baseball Classic, and as the league tries to increase its popularity around the world and considers sending its stars to the 2028 Olympics, ratings for the World Series are encouraging.
For the first two World Series games, average viewership in Japan was almost as high as in the United States, despite the population being one-third that of the United States, and average viewership in Canada was ten times greater than it was last year.
The average in the three countries over two games: 30.5 million, MLB said Tuesday. Last year’s World Series average: 28.6 million.
Game 1 audience in those three countries: 32.6 million, the highest for an MLB game in the U.S., Canada and Japan combined since Game 7 of the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Guardians.
When the Dodgers and Yankees played in the World Series last year — a clash between the two largest U.S. markets — the average game drew 15.8 million viewers in the United States. For the first two games of this year’s World Series, the average game drew 12.5 million viewers on Fox platforms, so Canadian markets are not included.
However, even without an American team to oppose the Dodgers, Fox said this year’s ratings are better than any other World Series since the pandemic, besides last year.
This year’s NBA Finals — a small-market game between Oklahoma City and Indiana — attracted an average of 10.3 million viewers in the United States.
This year’s World Series pits Team Japan – the team of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Rocky Sasaki – against Canada’s only major league team. Average viewership in Japan: 10.7 million, even though matches there start at 9 a.m.
Average audience for last year’s World Series in Canada: 720,000. That number through two games this year: 7.2 million. The population of the United States is ten times larger than the population of Canada.