Press Release Major League Baseball
Thrilling month of Postseason baseball leads to +20% increase in viewership, biggest jump since 2009
World Series Finishes With Average of 14.9 Million Viewers, Up +17% / Game 6 Draws 19.2 Million Viewers; Most-Watched MLB Game in Two Years and #1 Show on Twitter Across All of TV for Entire Month of October
The Red Sox clinched the World Series with a convincing 6-1 win over the Cardinals in Game 6 on Wednesday, winning their third championship in the past ten years and their first in front of a home crowd at Fenway Park in 95 years. The game also marked the conclusion of a very successful World Series – and entire Postseason – on television.
For the entire month of Postseason baseball beginning with the Wild Card games, viewership increased +20% across FOX, TBS and MLB Network (6.3 million average viewers), the largest year-over-year increase since 2009. In addition, 2013 marks the first year since 2001 that viewership increased for every round of the Postseason as well as the All-Star Game.
The World Series finished with an average of 14.9 million viewers, up +17% over last year and marking the largest year-over-year viewership increase for the World Series since 2009. As for Game 6 on Wednesday night, 19.2 million viewers tuned in, making it the most-watched MLB game since Game 7 of the 2011 World Series, based on Nielsen data. The game was the highest-rated show across all of television on Wednesday, and FOX once again won the night in primetime against all competition, something it has done on all six nights of the World Series.
When the Red Sox recorded the final out last night, 86% of TVs on in Boston were tuned to the game. Overall, the game drew a staggering 55.2 local rating, the highest rating for any MLB game in any market since Boston got a 55.3 for Game 4 of the 2007 World Series. In St. Louis, Game 6 drew a 37.9 rating.
In addition to being the highest-rated show on TV on Wednesday, Game 6 generated so much buzz on Twitter that 8.4 million people saw Tweets about the game, ranking it as the #1 episode based on Twitter TV Audience across all of TV for October 2013 to date. According to Nielsen SocialGuide, Game 6 drew 1,629,231 tweets by 623,192 unique authors, accounting for 40% of all Twitter conversation about anything on TV on Wednesday. The 1.63 million tweets are the most for any MLB game on record (since 2011), and included more than 125,000 tweets in a five minute window after the Red Sox recorded the final out, ranking it as by far the most talked-about moment of the Postseason.
