The Boston Red Sox are World Series champions after winning 6-1 over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night at Fenway Park and the team closed out one of the best championships in recent memory and the MLB is very pleased with the TV ratings from the playoffs.
FOX has been a winner with the World Series and one reason has been the two power baseball cities in St. Louis and Boston and it helped the network dominate primetime coverage. On Wednesday Fox had the best numbers of the postseason and according to HitFix.com, the ratings were the best since back in 2011. Variety reports that the game last night had 18 million viewers and while the game a couple years ago had 21 million, the ratings are still a win for the MLB.
Here is a flashback to some earlier TV coverage news with the Major League Baseball playoffs: The MLB Postseason baseball coverage on television has been a great success for the league and its partners in FOX and TBS, as both series in the American League and National League Championships have teams in large cities with passionate fan bases.
The MLB postseason coverage has continued to dominate in the TV ratings, although except when they are put up against any game from the NFL and while that is tough to swallow, the league has been happy with how things have turned out. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the TV ratings for Game 4 between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers, which ended with the series tied 2-2, ended up helping win the night early, as they had a steep rise up from the same game in the same series last season, up over 70 percent his time around.
Part of that is due to the fact that the red Sox are playing, but also that the games this season have been very exciting to watch for fans and have been ones that people want to see live, rather than in highlights. The fan bases for the Red Sox, Tigers, Dodgers and Cardinals are all passionate and with each coming from a decent sized market, the ratings have continued on a steady trend this postseason.
The games from earlier in the playoffs also were winning matchups for the networks, as the ALDS and NLDS series also ranked higher than they did last season. ABC was solid with their Toy Story event on Wednesday, as they tied with the MLB coverage for the coveted young demos. The ALCS playoffs will continue with the Red Sox and Tigers playing in Game 5 on Thursday night and that will put the series at 3-2 in favor of one of the teams and Boston has the advantage at least since two of the next three games will be at Fenway Park.
The game on Thursday will have Jon Lester taking on Anibal Sanchez and after Sanchez pitched six innings of no-hit ball with 12 strikeouts, the game could get another solid rating. Friday has another game in the National League Championship series and that should be an easy win for TBS, as there is not much programming on Friday nights around the tube and since it is a clinching game with the Cardinals up 3-2 in the series, there is a good chance it will win the ratings battle for the MLB and TBS again.
