The MLB Postseason and its international stars are generating record global viewership.
Literally a World Series match up
First ever World Series with two international teams
/s
Noah Lyles, is that you?
Canada vs Japan, let’s go!!!
So Toronto’s two World series didn’t happen
It’s a joke about the Dodgers actually being a Japanese team
Toronto Blue Jays vs Rosuanzerusu Dojyāsu
LA, Japan, and South Korea vs the US and Canada.
And they’re about to ruin all of this traction and goodwill next year by locking out…
Ridiculous.
~25% of Canada tuned in with 11.8M.
Pretty wild.
And remember tons of people watch illegally too
Without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball?
i love this gif
Absolute monsters
Only implied oral consent. Go straight to jail. Do not pass Go.
The number of people streaming statistically insignificant to be honest. Those websites can only handle a few thousand viewers.
How is it possible that the entire US only had like 10 million viewers, and then Canada who has 1/10th the population drew in even more? I don’t trust the US numbers
When a Canadian team is good and in a playoff or some other big tournament, it turns into appointment viewing here. Meanwhile most the USA probably couldn’t care less about the Blue Jays and Mariners.
Weren’t some hockey teams showing the Jays game on their megatron during their own games. That was awesome.
They made the Raptors game on Friday 1 hour earlier so people can stay in the arena and watch the Blue Jays game on the jumbotron when the basketball game ends, same for the Maple Leafs on Saturday
They moved this Saturday’s Leaf’s game to 5pm for the same reason.
Yeah, that was Calgary - against Winnipeg no less - so everybody in the arena was cheering for Toronto.
I care about the mariners
Majority of Canada cheers for the Blue Jays.
Majority of the US doesn’t give a shit about Seattle or the Blue Jays.
That’s my guess anyway.
Washington probably had a similar rate of viewership. But there’s only 8 million people in Washington. There’s 41 million people in Canada.
Also the 11.8 million were people who tuned in to the game at any point. Average audience was about 6 million in Canada 9 million USA. That’s where the 15 million came from.
Wow so Japan had higher viewership than either US or Canada
They fucking love baseball.
Cuz everyone 40 years and younger is illegally streaming (well more like 90 percent)
Bold of you to assume Canadians aren’t doing that too
True
I pay for sportsnet it’s legit good
I’ll pirate till I die lol
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Weird way to say “all my friends are rich”
Ah ok that’s not bad at all then (besides having roommates, not a big roommate guy these days in my thirties lol)
Because everyone in the us is watching STREAMs from the EAST
The only reason I got to watch it streaming normally is I guess I’m paying for something on Amazon prime but I couldn’t tell you what lmao
1 team of primary interest up here in the great white north.
Dodgers steam rolling Brewers made the series easy to skip and my poor mariners are a team of obscurity.
Just how Canada works, we only have 1NBA and 1 MLB team. Gives the entire country something to rally behind which is always awesome to see.
1/10th the population, 1/30th the number of teams. Not that difficult
Canadians really like sports, especially when it’s a national brand like the Jays or Raptors
Crazy how none of us knew baseball or how to throw a ball in 2015. Thanks Harold Reynolds, ya dummy!
It was even drawing all 20 Mariners fans in Vancouver!
Less and less convinced we lose the 2027 season. Baseball is in its best shape in almost a decade and is growing at a good rate. But maybe the billionaire pricks are really that stupid to lock it out.
If there’s anything the 2000s have proven about billionaires is that they aren’t robotic market followers that try to emotionlessly maximize profit. They’re just as stupid as any random person you meet on the street, only they’re convinced they know business and that any desicion they make is the best one.
They don’t make good business desicions based off the market. The market is forced to follow their stupid business desicions.
True. But aren’t MLB’s negotiations over TV contracts coming up in 2028?
Why would they want a lockout to anger fans that’ll depress ratings just before negotiations?
Fans being angry doesn’t matter. Wise money doesn’t matter. Billionaires want control and to feel like they are in control.
And? You don’t think owner have always wanted control for 50+ years?
Like back in the “good old days” when Nolan Ryan had to pump gas station in the winter after his first MLB season to make ends meet?
Anyway, lots of billionaire owners don’t want a lockout like Dodgers, Mets, Blue Jays, Yankees, Red Sox ownership. And probably the poorer owners making millions off luxury taxes don’t either – because they’ll lose luxury tax revenue.
So the issue is whether there’s enough in the middle who’ll want it. Don’t know.
Sigh, 100% this.
God dammit I hate how right you are
There won’t be a lengthy lockout cuz the big market owners who are driving all of the revenue won’t allow it as they won’t agree to a cap without a floor, especially with revenue sharing. They aren’t going to just allow the small market owners to dictate a cap on how they choose to spend their money while also raking in and pocketing revenue sharing dollars. The cheap ass small market owners don’t have the pull and sway they and their fans think they do. The mid market owners will side with the big market owners in the end cuz that’s who makes them money. The big market owners will throw the small market owners a bone and be done with it. Baseball revenues and popularity are on the rise cuz of the Dodgers, Yankees, Phillies, Blue Jays, Mets, and other spenders not cuz of the Pirates, A’s, Marlins, etc… Lol
Add in that many of the small market teams - like Pittsburgh and Sacramento - makes bank off the current arrangement. It’s actually the handful of middle market teams that would be most in favour of a cap-no-floor system. And there’s not enough of those to carry a lockout to any serious risk of losing a season.
Yeah I find it laughable that people think that these small market owners actually want a cap, that they actually care about competitiveness and parity. They don’t give a shit at all. They love the current system. They can just let teams like the Dodgers do all the work and drive revenues domestically and internationally while they can just sit back, do nothing, and collect the revenue sharing dollars making bank. All this salary cap and lockout propaganda is to fool their fanbases so that they can say, “See, we tried to make the system more competitive by fighting for a cap but the evil players union wouldn’t agree to it so we have no choice but to keep payroll down and not spend on the team.” It’s all bullshit cuz they know 1) the players union will never agree to a cap without a floor and 2) they will never agree to a salary floor that forces them to spend more.
First ever World Series with no US team is huge for baseball. Japan has the advantage on paper but I wouldn’t count Canada out.
It sucks that America’s team didnt get in. I wouldve love to see classic Americans like Julio Rodriguez and Randy Arozarena playing in the WS
wait until the WBC
I will never forget that Japan vs Korea at Dodger Stadium.
unfortunately I wasn’t paying much attention in 2017
but 2023 USA-Japan, USA-Venezuela, Japan-Mexico, DR-Puerto Rico were legendary
Its the one where Korean manager planted a Korean flag on the pitching mound.
Then Ichiro said “Fck!” for the first time in his life.
And then Ichiro drove in two runs in the top of the 10th to win 1st place for Japan.
Keith Olbermann wants to know your location
Classic? I actually preferred the new flavor
Canada, America, and Japan viewership for the World Series going to be massive.
A World Series between two teams who are very bad for baseball
Looking forward to ruining baseball with you over the next week, friend. May the best team win o7
It’s a jab at Ken Rosenthal’s stupid comment
Blue Jays fans can’t be hopping on the bad for baseball bandwagon now lol no one has ever said that about them
I believe it was Ken Rosenthal that said if Ohtani went to the Jays it would be bad for baseball. Edit: He said this because Americans wouldn’t watch the Jays and the sport would lose popularity. So by them being in the World Series it would have to be bad for baseball since Ken thought that Americans won’t watch the Jays.
Yes, yes they have.
Jon Heyman, on Ohtani choosing L.A over Toronto:
“No offense to the Toronto Blue Jays, rumored in the final days to be making progress, but this is much better for Major League Baseball. I know I will be accused of being an American but the Dodgers are a storied franchise, the franchise of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully. Baseball will be better for it.”
That’s not the same thing lol. That’s like, the opposite of the same thing. This hypothetical scenario that didn’t happen would’ve been worse for baseball than this other thing
Plus who cares about Heyman
Don’t forget proper lifting technique while shifting those goal posts big guy
Cmon, you really think people are saying the Jays are ruining baseball?
Go do a google search for “ruining baseball” and let me know when the Jays come up. I got about 5 pages in before I gave up
No, but two guys pulled up the receipts and I think that’s funny
Yeah I probably spoke in too many absolutes I’ll admit that lol
In a time where viewership and attendance is up there are people that want to lock the sport out.
As greedy as the owners are, I don’t see how they could instigate a lockout and not have it severely impact their bottom line. So I’m still hopeful we’ll avoid a shutdown.
I’m convinced there won’t be a lengthy lockout. Too much damn money will be lost with a lockout. Baseball has an absolute cash cow with Shohei and the Dodgers driving revenues, attendance, ratings, and advertising up across the board. Baseball finally has a face of baseball and brand that transcends the sport nationally and globally. Even they aren’t stupid enough to ruin that.
It’s been shown over and over and over again that fans get over losing the first month or two of a season almost immediately. So there’s very little risk to the owners on a short lockout.
Can you provide some examples?
Lockout would be dumb. Baseball is booming. NBA is stalling/downtrending. Perfect time for continued baseball.
Yeah, first time in my life I can recall baseball being this cool and NBA going through such bad PR. MLB owners going for a lockout now would destroy a lot of momentum. A lot of insiders think it will be the next negotiation not this upcoming one but it feels inevitable.
I was told by several social media pundits that the Dodgers are, and I quote, “ruining baseball.”
People don’t want to hear it but casual fans like dynasties
The Dodgers are good for baseball
They are but I’m still going to talk shit about them just paying free agents and circumventing the luxury tax even though deep down I know that’s not the case. Fuck the dodgers
Why was Freddie a free agent again
His agent fucked him. More or less he gave the Braves an ultimatum when the Braves wanted to pay him so our GM was like “fuck you then” and traded for Matt. When Freddie returned to Atlanta he talked with the front office and was on tv crying that night, Kersh publicly questioned Freddie’s loyalty to the dodgers, and Freddie’s agent was fired the next day
Freddie basically was like “well they traded for Matt, guess I’ll go home”
Please also assign blame to the idiot owners of the Pirates, Rockies, Reds etc that won’t spend their revenue on payroll.
I mean, the dodgers wouldn’t be a dynasty if the other owners actually gave a shit. If Tampa paid snell or glasnow, or if Boston actually paid mookie, we’d have a different scenario
See THIS is the kind of hater mentality I can get behind. No twisting narratives to justify your hate, just pure hate for the love the game. Ya gotta respect it, its beautiful. Fuck the braves right back at ya
Fuck you see you next October ❤️
Yall better not be meh again next year that way we can battle in October
He is twisting the narrative though
How are they circumventing the luxury tax? It is allowed to defer salaries, and they paid the luxury tax.
They arent but they guy said hes just keep lying about it anyway. This is why everything is fucked these days
Fuck the Braves (even tho y’alls franchise is run beautifully)
This is part of my point.
Not all the casuals even love the Dodgers. They hear team spend a lot and always win and some people like I want to see them lose
Well said and that’s the point. Every sport is better when there’s a dynasty that becomes a villain. I’d venture to say the NFL kinda misses the Patriots.
Chiefs’ are doing a good job taking their place.
Now I just talk shit about the chiefs
They are good for getting casual fans involved
The people who are saying it’s ruining baseball are not the casual fans
Definitely not
I used to be a hardcore baseball fan and hated the evil empire.
I’ve only just started watching baseball again, mostly just playoffs, and the Dodgers are probably the reason I’m watching again.
Yeah I definitely care about the NFL more when the Chiefs are doing well too haha
Jordan gained international popularity and his name was known beyond borders even back in the 90s in a time where social media wasn’t a thing. People love when someone dominates a sport.
The same people bitching about the Dodgers and dynasties complained about the NBA Finals not having Steph or LeBron anymore.
No, it’s not lol
That’s just smoke. The Dodgers are a massive brand like the Yankees, and have like a half dozen marquee players. All they can do is draw more eyeballs to the game.
The eyes they draw will outweigh the dozen redditors who rage quit the sport
and they won’t even quit, they’ll just keep whining
the health of baseball peaked with DBacks-Rangers, it’s dying now
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not familiar with the championship round
The 2001 World Series is considered one of the best ever. Just because it happened before you were born doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant.
If the World Series goes at least 6 games, it has potential to get some big global viewership numbers
Does it go 5?
5 games and then an earthquake postpones the game with a redo so we effectively end up with 8’games in the end?
And a disturbing lot of these pundits are using George Springer as their ‘good morale character’ against the evil, supervillain Dodgers.
Damn it all to hell. There’s a kid on my son’s rec fall ball team (13u) who had never played baseball a day in his life until he and his dad started playing catch this summer. He’s a HUGE dodger fan because of Ohtani. Is this good for the “game” of baseball? Absolutely! Is this good for my mental health, absolutely not! Will I hate watch and root for the country of Canada? Yes I will.
based on this post I’m starting to think the Giants were ruining baseball in 2010, 2012, and 2014 when screwed up international viewership by playing fellow no-name teams the Rangers, Tigers, and Royals in the WS
Well, A team with a payroll of 510M sweeping a team with a payroll of 110M isn’t exactly helping baseball.
It may not be cheating by the current rulebook (I have no idea why not), but it’s not exactly a fair competition.
Man, why do I keep seeing jays fans being so disingenuous with payroll numbers recently. Like since when tf did we count tax payments when discussing payroll? You’re just including it to try and make the jays seem like less of a massive market team than they are.
Sorry man, that must be Scott. He’s a dick.
You’re litterally the one who brought up the dodger payroll fool.
And there’s nothing disingenuous about the above numbers. - Those are the actual real (pre luxury tax) 2025 payroll numbers of LAD and Milwaukee when correcting for deferments.
I love that with the time difference, an evening primetime start in the US is “everyone just got to the office in the morning” time in Japan, so I’m choosing to believe that a lot of people are not getting much done in the first few hours of the workday in Japan when there’s a game on! (Although I do feel for the kids who have to miss it because of school.)
The percentages probably mean percentage of people watching TV not percentage of the total population of the area.
Correct. “Share” means the percent of televisions that were on at the time
I’m a high school student in Japan and I secretly watch Dodgers games during class.
9am Tokyo time is rough. I feel like offices should just switch to a 11-7 or 12-8 schedule. Might be asking too much though. At least the weekend games will be a good time for them.
11-7, 12-8??
No fk that. I wanna see my wife and kids before they go to bed.
A lot of people work these hours and deal with it. Either you slack off in the morning or you take the morning off and work the evening. Not really any other choice if you want to watch the game.
Overtime is pretty much guaranteed for some indistries; 9-6 + 2 hrs OT + 1hr travel is gonna be 9.
Now shift that a few hours and you’ll be home at midnight or past it.
I love watching my countrymen play ball, but that’s something I’m not going to prioritize over family.
So no, I disagree with your “offices should switch to a 11-8 / 12-9 schedule”.
I’m all for individuals using flex time to meet their wants, however.
Well you can catch the weekend games at least
Nope, 9AM start time means taking my kids to English class or taking them to the park.
Such is life for a family man.
One of my earliest memories is watching the Jays win the 1993 World Series with my dad.
Just saying…
My kids (pre-schoolers) hate baseball hahaha.
Through Amazon, I watched the LAD vs NYY back in May with my kids; they thought the Ohtani homerun in the first inning was “okay” but absolutely thought the game was moving at a snail’s pace; only got through two innings lol.
They like soccer and parkour though, which I’m happy with.
I was eating ramen in Kitakata during Game 4 of the World Series last year and the owner/chef was glued to the TV screen of the Japanese broadcast lol. I didn’t even watch baseball then but I could feel the hype from half the world away because Japan was so into it.
Dodgers vs Blue Jays to preview Japan vs Canada in the next WBC Final.
Funny since the only Canada player in this WS is Freddie Freeman.
Vladdy is also Canadian.
Yeah I know. I didn’t say Canadian. I purposedly say “Canada player.” If Jr plays, he will be representing DR in the WBC. Only Freddie will play for Canada.
International history is being made. ALCS Game 7 was the most-watched BlueJays game ever on Sportsnet with an average of 6 million viewers tuning in to watch Canada’s Team punch their ticket to the World Series! The game reached 11.8 million Canadians
how does that compare to hockey?
For comparison, the most-watched Sportsnet broadcast in history was Game 7 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final (Oilers-Panthers), which had 7.5 million average-minute viewers.
Game 7 of the Leafs-Panthers series in May drew 4 million viewers.
Wow that’s actually surprising
Almost all of Canada pulled for the Blue Jays, but there are a number of Canadian NHL teams that don’t care for the other Canadian teams.
Also, people often underestimate the baseball culture in Canada. It’s quite popular
And if anyone wants to find out about the early history of baseball in Canada, The Nations of Canada podcast just did an episode on the origins of the sport up to just after the turn of the century. The episode is called “Degraded by Yankee Professionalism”. The episode before, “The Athletic War” focuses on hockey and the absolute battle between people obsessed with Victorian-era amateurism and the professional game.
Does it depend on the region?
16.67 (of a population of 34.01 million) watched the men’s hockey gold medal match at the 2010 Olympics (Canada-USA, natch), which is a better comparison than NHL hockey imo (there are many, many Canadians who could care less about the Oilers while the Jays are Canada’s Team)
The Pirates owner ain’t going to be complaining about getting his cut of the profits from this. Yet, will fight tooth and nail for a hard cap in order to have an excuse to continue to be cheap.
Fun fact: Pirates raked in a bigger profit last year than LA and Yankees.
How?
Dodgers spend a very high percentage of their revenue on payroll. The Pirates don’t and receive revenue-sharing
Yeah, gonna have to see a source on that.
The only way I believe you is that if it’s on a ROE or some other sort of %-based metric.
MLB has revenue sharing which helps out the smaller markets. Dodgers invest into their system while the luxury tax Dodgers pay mostly goes to the other owners. Pirates don’t invest and they rake in a bunch of money from the revenue sharing
Honestly, revenue sharing is a great alternative to having no salary caps
You’re forgetting revenue sources like local TV deal and TV deal in Japan and sponsorships deals in the US and Japan that aren’t public and don’t count towards luxury tax. The Dodgers are making a huge profit and the Ohtani deal has already paid off.
It’s almost like Canada IS a big market… who knew?
The Blue Jays have a market of 40 million people to themselves, an entire country behind them.
Big market for Rogers who own the Jays and Sportsnet. The US networks don’t profit from it.
Japan about to watch the hell out of the World Series with Goatani, Yamagoato and Sasaki involved
Who would all be eclipsed by Munenori Kawasaki if he were to make an appearance in Toronto.
Don’t forget japans own Dave “steal my base and my heart” Roberts
Perfect time for them too to tune in. Going to start at 9am Saturday, Tokyo time.
Good for baseball?
But people told me viewership would be way down because the Dodgers super team.
Add a couple million viewers from the Dominican Republic, watching Vladdy Jr. in the Blue Jay and Teoscar Hernandez in the Dodgers.
Not sure they’re paying for Fox
Yeah probably not. But hey, some games are purchased by local TV channels and transmitted free.
Rob Manfred right now
MLB has always had international stars. Its not new.
Buuuut…. You know the rest.
bAd fOr RaTiNgS
Japanese are fucking apeshit for baseball. I love it!
So much for Dodgers ruining baseball.
God gives his strongest challenges to his greatest warriors and his name is Vladimir Guerrero Jr. And the blue jays
There is no God!!!
Says the city of angels!
Just because a city is name as part of a made up deity, doesn’t mean that deity exists.
We will see Friday night
Nielsen also changed their viewership ratings methodology earlier this year, and if I remember the article correctly it stated all sports viewership ratings would gain a significant boost.
Yes, they say they’ve somehow figured out how to calculate better for people watching in bars and stuff
get ready to learn actual world series buddy
I wonder how much Ohtani’s first Homerun baseball will sell for. The stands are going to go post apocalyptic wherever the ball lands. Just for the sake of human lives (and potential lawsuits), I hope someone just cleanly catches the baseball.
2017? What happened in 2017?
…*
All this momentum they got going just to Lockout the league in 2027
Hopefully this increased profit makes the owners reconsider the lockout
Sorry fans of smaller teams, the big teams winning is Good for Baseball!
They were watching the Mariners. Good luck beating those number /s
This feeds my agenda of expanding the postseason, ALDS needs to be best of 7 and Wild Card needs to be 5 games
Perfect time to have the whole thing shut down over a CBA dispute…
Baseball is finally back to gaining popularity both in the U.S and across the world and the owners are going to throw that away and risk not recovering
Go Padres!
😂 maybe one day