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Game 3 of the World Series went deep into the night Monday, stretching for 6 hours and 39 minutes in what was the second-longest game by time in MLB postseason history. Viewership, however, remained strong on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
Fox said late Wednesday that it averaged 11.4 million viewers for the 18-inning matchup between the Blue Jays and Dodgers, by itself down 16% from the comparable game last year for Yankees-Dodgers.
Canada’s Sportsnet, however, averaged 5.8 million viewers, despite the game ending at nearly 3 a.m. Tuesday for Toronto-area viewers, while the country’s French-language TVA Sports added about 400,000 more on average. Overall, Game 3 averaged 17.6 million across the U.S. and Canada, a 27% increase from last year.
The Sportsnet figure for Game 3 follows a record 7 million for Game 1 on the network and 6.6 million for Game 2. The Game 3 figure is still a historic high point for the Blue Jays on Sportsnet, as it neared the 6 million from Game 7 of the American League Championship Series last week that stood as the network’s record for the club until the World Series. Sportsnet and the Blue Jays are both owned by Canadian telecommunications giant Rogers Communications, now in the process of building one of the world’s most powerful sports portfolios.
A New Dynamic
Fox’s Game 3 performance followed the slight declines for Games 1 and 2, with the lack of a second U.S. team market measured by Nielsen. That slide was expected, as while the World Series is a major national and now international event, viewership from the home markets of the two competing teams drives a meaningful chunk of the overall audience.
Combining the Fox, Sportsnet, and TVA figures for this year, however, reveals a 25% cumulative increase through Game 3 from even the high-profile Yankees-Dodgers matchup in last year’s World Series. The NHL has experienced a similar dynamic in recent years, particularly with the Oilers competing in the Stanley Cup Final the last two seasons.
The massive influx of interest from Canadian fans has been a major storyline of the entire MLB postseason, to the point that league commissioner Rob Manfred has said multiple cities in the country could be expansion candidates. Similar to the first two World Series contests, the Game 3 average on Sportsnet represented about 14% of the Canadian population.
Game 3 of the World Series featured another round of heroics from Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani, who got on base a record nine times in the 6–5 Dodgers win. Ohtani, however, could not match that level of performance during his first World Series pitching appearance in Game 4, a 6–2 Blue Jays win.
That Toronto victory deadlocked the series at two games each heading into Wednesday’s Game 5 at Dodger Stadium. The Game 4 outcome ensured the World Series will return to Toronto, likely fueling more big viewership numbers for Fox and Sportsnet. It also means that the Dodgers’ bid to clinch a World Series on their home field for the first time since 1963 will remain out of reach for at least another year.
