World Series Game 7 ratings could not meet last year’s high bar, but still delivered one of sports’ biggest metered market ratings in recent memory.
Wednesday’s Astros-Dodgers World Series Game 7 scored an 18.8 overnight rating on FOX, down 25% from Cubs-Indians last year (25.2) but up 24% from Giants-Royals in 2014 (15.2). There was no Game 7 in 2015.
The Astros’ anticlimactic win delivered the second-best Major League Baseball overnight since the clinching Red Sox-Cardinals Game 4 in 2004 (19.7). Last year’s Game 7 holds the top spot.
Overall, the 18.8 is the ninth-highest baseball overnight in the past 20 years, and the third-highest excluding Yankees and Cubs games.
The 18.8 is also the highest for any non-NFL sporting event this year, the second straight year baseball has taken top honors. Excluding both the NFL and the Olympic Games, it is the fourth-highest overnight for any sporting event in a decade — since the 2007 Florida-Ohio State college football national championship (19.1) — behind last year’s Game 7, Game 7 of the 2016 Cavaliers-Warriors NBA Finals (18.9) and the 2015 Ohio State-Oregon college football title game (18.9).
Game 7 delivered a 47.1 rating in Houston, the market’s best ever baseball rating. The previous high was 45.3 for Game 3 of the 2005 World Series. Los Angeles delivered a 36.7, down from the market’s last World Series Game 7, Giants-Angels in 2002 (42.0). Compared to other championship game sevens in the market, it trailed Celtics-Lakers in the 2010 NBA Finals (39.7) but cruised past Mighty Ducks-Devils in the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals (10.0).
[Wed. numbers from Fox Sports PR/Twitter 11.2]
