Nearly nine million for D'Backs' Game 7 win; LCS at five-year high

2T3DGYN Philadelphia, United States. 24th Oct, 2023. Arizona Diamondbacks Corbin Carroll scores on a single by Gabriel Moreno in the fifth inning against the Philadelphia Phillies in game seven of the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Tuesday, October 24, 2023. Photo by Laurence Kesterson/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News

Facing less formidable competition than the night before, the second Game 7 of baseball’s League Championship Series was a far stronger draw than the first.

Tuesday’s Diamondbacks-Phillies National League Championship Series Game 7 averaged a combined 4.7 rating and 8.99 million viewers across TBS (8.89M) and truTV (103K) — 9.09 million including Spanish-language coverage on MLB Network (98K) — marking the largest postseason audience outside of the World Series since the previous NLCS Game 7 in the 2020 “bubble” (Braves-Dodgers: 9.91M).

Arizona’s upset win trails only the 2020 game and Yankees-Astros in 2017 (10.0M) as the most-watched LCS Game 7 in the past 15 years (seven telecasts). It easily outdrew the previous night’s Rangers-Astros ALCS Game 7 on the Fox Sports family of networks (6.77M).

MLB LCS Game 7 viewership, past 30 years

Keep in mind Monday’s game aired directly opposite NFL Monday Night Football on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 (18.6M) and Tuesday’s game faced far less competition in the form of NBA Opening Night on TNT (Lakers-Nuggets: 2.84M; Suns-Warriors: 2.71M).

Notably, Diamondbacks-Phillies did not just beat the NBA games overall, but doubled Lakers-Nuggets in adults 18-49 (2.2 to 1.1). There were two postseason games on NBA Opening Night last season (Guardians-Yankees ALDS Game 5 and Padres-Phillies NLCS Game 1), and they both lost the head-to-head in 18-49.

The full, seven-game Diamondbacks-Phillies series averaged 5.34 million viewers across TBS and truTV, up 15% from last year’s five-game Phillies-Padres series on Fox Sports (4.66M) and higher than this year’s seven-game ALCS on Fox (5.05M). With both series going the distance, the complete LCS averaged 5.19 million viewers — up 6% from last year’s nine-game average (4.88M) and the highest LCS average since 2018 (5.31M).

After declines for the Wild Card round and Division Series, the LCS has boosted the full postseason average to a four percent increase over the first three rounds last year (from 3.64 to 3.77M). TBS and truTV averaged 4.6 million viewers for National League coverage, up 8% from last year.

(Tuesday night estimates from Sports TV Ratings 10.25)

Multiple NFL partners at highs through seven weeks

Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Comments 15

Jean Ramos says:

3 years ago

What are your expectations for tonight’s game?
- Jon Lewis says:
  
  3 years ago
  
  In the neighborhood of 10-10.5M viewers.
JP says:

3 years ago

These numbers should bode very well for the World Series series coming up.
Jean Ramos says:

3 years ago

Why did MLB put Game 7 on a Saturday? It doesn’t make sense because Saturday is historically not a good day for ratings
- dx says:
  
  3 years ago
  
  Because they wanted to schedule so as to not have a Sunday night game 10/29 against SNF, especially when FOX isn’t scheduled to have an NFL doubleheader to provide a lead-in that weekend.
  
  Monday obviously is unique this year with ABC carrying all MNF games due to the writers’/actors strikes but otherwise MLB and FOX have no problem with Monday/Thursday games against NFL on cable.
  
  FOX carried regular season games on some Thursday nights this year, including against NFL/Prime, so they are definitely okay with it.
  - Wyatt Smith says:
    
    3 years ago
    
    To me the problem they need to face is, they need to have the off days on Monday and Thursday the way they were back in the day, so that way you have 4 games in the middle of the week and only 1 weekend you have to deal with (start the series on a Tuesday) and NFL needs to be smarter and give Fox either late singleheader or DH in the majority of the markets to boost its ratings, or have the NFL take the night off like it has been in the past (even if NFL goes on Monday, to be real, NFL always has that decision to have a opening weekend MNF DH to replace this game against the World Series if it has to)
    - Jet says:
      
      3 years ago
      
      The World Series off-days were on Monday and Friday under the schedule that was in place for several decades. It went Sat-Sun-Tues-Wed-Thu-Sat-Sun.
      
      That schedule used to avoid “Monday Night Football” when “Sunday Night Football” was either non-existent or a cable show with a small audience. Once NBC started “SNF,” it was a ratings monster to be avoided.
    - Wyatt Smith says:
      
      3 years ago
      
      Yeah once NBC brought SNF as the game of the week, MLB went with the 2 Tuesday, 2 Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday format, so it had NFL lead out on the Sunday game 5 had it been needed, but now with no Sunday at all on the World Series, Fox no longer has the option to use it’s Late NFL DH window to lead in the World Series which has proven good ratings
JEFF E HIRSCHMAN says:

3 years ago

I would have started the World series tonight on Thursday going against a Prime NFL game is not the same as ABC. Saturday is not a big night for viewership so would be off on Saturday.
- Jon Lewis says:
  
  3 years ago
  
  Yes, but then you end up with a Sunday game in a week when FOX has the singleheader.
  - Jet says:
    
    3 years ago
    
    And you’d end up with a potential Game 7 on a Friday night, the least-watched night of television.
    - Wyatt Smith says:
      
      3 years ago
      
      That’s the case here in this scenario, games 6 and 7 on the 2 least watched nights Is not what it should of been (they need to add more Travel days or push the start of the series back to the Tuesday start format so we have 2 weeks in a row with mid week games instead on the 2 least watched night of the week, plus Sunday is the most watched night of the week, so they need to at least have 1 of those in a series (either pick a night that SNF isn’t broadcasting on a given night, even Labor Day weekend is a good time to do the World Series, and have the MLB preseason start in January if you have to)
esl says:

3 years ago

Paulsen, what are your thoughts on the World Series avoiding NFL Sunday. Do you think its a good idea? Or do you think losing out on the Sunday night audience will hurt the audience (even against NFL)? Especially if a game 7 is on a Saturday night?
Wyatt Smith says:

3 years ago

To me in my opinion was, why TBS airing a Tuesday night game 7 against NBA on TNT? (Wouldn’t tuner wanted to focus on 1 event at a time by only having 1 sport go on their networks at the same time? ) plus Fox and FS1 would of been better to air the game 7 on Tuesday than TBS (that would be 3 straight Tuesdays nights in a row for baseball coverage)
Josh says:

3 years ago

Baseball is not dead! Or at least until WS numbers come out.