Incredible World Series, especially Game 7, provided an unexpected boon for MLB
Published 3 days ago • 4 min read
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Amazing World Series Game 7 could boost MLB long-term
A concluding graphic from MLB's Game 7 highlights video. (MLB on YouTube.)
There's long been plenty of discussion around which teams leagues and broadcasters would ideally want in their championship series from a business perspective. For U.S. broadcasters in particular, the ideal setup would seem to be two large-market teams; small-market teams are less ideal, and foreign teams that don't count in U.S. ratings are especially not ideal. That would seem to make the Toronto Blue Jays, the only Canadian team amongst MLB's 30 franchises, the least desirable World Series contestant for at least Fox, if not MLB overall.
But, as written here (premium post) during the Blue Jays' divisional series against the New York Yankees (likely the most-desired team for U.S. broadcasters given their history, fanbase, and No. 1 media market) almost a full month ago, the business picture is more nuanced than that. Individual ratings in a given year aren't that critical for anything apart from broadcaster ad sales (and potentially makegoods if ratings underwhelm). And the Blue Jays come with a notable TV audience of their own, one that's expanded incredibly through this playoff run. That doesn't help Fox, but it does help Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet (part of Rogers Communications, which also owns the team and their stadium) and MLB, especially when it comes time to negotiate the next round of national MLB rights in Canada.
However, a key thing to note, as discussed in both that post and in my Jays-Dodgers ratings prediction last week, is that markets alone frequently aren't the pivotal factor in eventual ratings. Instead, that's how competitive and engaging the on-field play winds up being, especially in terms of how long a series goes. And the Jays and Dodgers delivered both one of the most remarkable World Series ever (including the 18-inning Game 3, tied for the longest in World Series history) and one of the most incredible Game 7 showings ever, which the Dodgers eventually won 5-4 in 11 innings Saturday. That's likely to not just bolster the series ratings beyond what many expected, but also provide MLB a huge selling point for their game going into the offseason.
That Game 7 had everything. It was a constant roller-coaster ride of tension, filled with so many unlikely heroes (especially the Dodgers' Miguel Rojas, who recorded the highest exit velocity of his career on a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth inning, then somehow made an incredible off-balance throw to home to preserve the score in the bottom of the ninth) and astounding moments. Yahoo Sports' Jack Baer's "The 14 most absurd moments from the Dodgers' Game 7 win" is a great summary of much of the zaniness that happened, but even those 14 selections can't describe it all. And it will certainly go down as one of the most remarkable World Series games ever played, with individual rankings there having a lot to do with particular team preferences. But it's the forward-looking conclusion of Joe Posnanski's beautiful "The Greatest Game I've Ever Seen" piece on this game (written from the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, of all places) that really illustrates what a game like this could mean for baseball:
The point is, there is no greatest game in baseball history, not really; the game has been around too long, too many extraordinary things have happened, too many emotions are tied up in our memories, too many great games have been played.
And yet, we HAVE to ask if Saturday’s game was the greatest ever — if this was the Greatest World Series ever; the folks at MLB dusted off a ranking I did a few years ago on that subject — because that’s the point, isn’t it? We want to mark our time. They’ve been playing professional baseball for 150 years. You would think by now that we’ve seen everything.
And games like Saturday night remind us: No. This is baseball.
We haven’t seen anything yet.
This is the key business and media point. First off, market effects do matter for ratings, but they're far less important than a competitive series (in both series length and individual games; ratings almost always rise as a series goes on, and close-throughout games retain far more audience than blowouts, with some marathon games even gaining audience over time). Incredible plays and moments in an individual game help further, getting currently-watching viewers to stick around and prompting chatter on social media that gets new figures to tune in.
But historic games that draw "greatest ever" discussion help even beyond that. They drive attention in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. For example, MLB's own 38-minute highlight video of Game 7 had 2.2 million views on YouTube alone as of Sunday afternoon. Some of those are certainly from people who watched all or part of the game and want to relive it, but there's also likely a group that saw the chatter about this Sunday morning and wanted to see it for themselves. The Jays might not have been the pick for most (outside of their fans and Sportsnet executives) for a preferred World Series team. But the product they and the Dodgers produced seems like an incredible boon for MLB, and a World Series that could generate much more ongoing discussion and impacts than even last year's Yankees-Dodgers clash (which only went five games). And Posnanski's conclusion there is absolutely right; if a MLB game can still surprise us this way 149 years after the founding of the National League, in the 121st World Series, don't we want to see what crazy thing comes next?
