Major League Baseball’s hot streak of television viewership continued through the second round of the playoffs and into the start of the third round.
After the league posted across-the-board audience increases in the regular season and the wild-card round, it ended the division series round with an average per-game viewership of 4.17 million, up 17% from last year and the best such figure since 2011. Among the other viewership figures from the division series:
- Game 5 of the Tigers-Mariners series on Oct. 10, a 15-inning thriller won by Seattle, averaged 8.72 million on Fox. That represented the most-watched American League Division Series games in 14 years.
- Postseason viewership through the first two rounds is averaging 4.33 million per game, up 30% from last year. That’s also the highest level since 2010, buoyed in part by record-setting figures in the wild-card round.
- The Yankees–Blue Jays ALDS matchup, won by Toronto, averaged 7.65 million across both Canada and the U.S. Canadian viewership is not part of the U.S.-based figures from Nielsen. Within Canada, though, the average of 3.65 million per game was up 10% compared to nine years ago, when the Blue Jays were last in the ALDS.
More Up North
That latter average, meanwhile, is about 9% of the total Canadian population. Similar penetration in the U.S. would be equivalent to a viewing audience of more than 30 million, which is a typical audience for an early-round NFL postseason game.
The initial stages of the championship series round, meanwhile, have also performed well. Despite Canadian viewership not factoring into the U.S.-based Nielsen data, Fox said that Game 1 of the American League Championship Series between the Mariners and Blue Jays averaged 5.31 million viewers, up 32% from the comparable game last year between the Guardians and Yankees on TNT Sports.
When including another 4.7 million in Canada, though, Game 1 of the ALCS surpassed 10 million in average viewership.
The escalation in MLB viewership extends what has been a resurgent season for the league across many key audience metrics, also including attendance.
“It’s a continuation of the momentum that we’ve seen in the game,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said last month at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit.
