Cubs turn back the TV clock
THE Cubs winning their first World Series in more than a century turned back the clock for baseball on television, giving the sport its biggest audience in 25 years with Thursday’s (NZ time) Game 7 victory.
Their 8-7, 10-inning triumph over the Indians on Fox averaged a whopping 40 million viewers, according to Nielsen estimates, which makes it the most watched World Series game since 1991.
At a time when there were far fewer viewing options, the Twins’ 10-inning Game 7 triumph over the Braves that year drew an averaged 50.3 million.
And Thursday’s victory for the Cubs might have done even better if not for the 17-minute rain delay with the game tied 6-6 after nine innings.
The audience appears to have peaked at around 49.9 million before umpires ordered the tarp rolled out at Cleveland’s Progressive Field, and roughly 7 million fewer viewers were tuned in when the game resumed.
Here in the Chicago TV market, Game 7 averaged more than 3.2 million viewers from 7pm to midnight.
The historic victory for the Cubs, playing in their first World Series since 1945 and earning their first championship since 1908, averaged a 51.5 household rating. That means on average it was on in 51.5 per cent of Chicago-area homes or watched by about 1.78 million households.
Among those households in the Chicago market watching television, almost three out of four - 72 per cent - had the game on in any quarter hour. Between 11:45pm and midnight, as Game 7 was ending Chicago Tribune USA TODAY and the Cubs’ celebration began, about 82 per cent of all local homes watching TV had the game on.
Nationally, this year’s World Series is estimated to have averaged 23.4 million viewers, the most since Theo Epstein’s 2004 Boston Red Sox ended the franchise’s 86 years without a World Series title in a four-game sweep of the Cardinals.
To give an idea of just how much of a surge the Cubs helped create, last year’s Royals-Mets World Series averaged just 14.7 million viewers over five games.
The only sporting events this year to average more viewers nationally than the Cubs and Indians’ finale this year have been the Super Bowl (which averaged 111.9 million viewers), the AFC title game (53.5 million) and NFC championship (45.7 million).