NEWSLETTER
Perhaps this was to be expected, but holy crap, the Chicago Cubs’ NLCS Game 6, World Series ticket-clinching win over the Los Angeles Dodgers was a TV-watching behemoth.
According to the Associated Press and ESPN.com, the game was seen by an average of 9.7 million viewers on Fox Sports 1, netting the highest total for a league championship series game in six years. The 2010 Phillies-Giants game that beat them, by the way, was was aired on FOX (a channel available to many more than the much less common Fox Sports 1).
According to the article, the Cubs/Dodgers game had a 25.8 rating and a 46 share in Chicago, plus a 10.2 rating and a 23 share in Los Angeles. Which, if you don’t know what that means, let me explain, because I think you’ll be blown away. [Brett: I was.]
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The first number (the rating) is simply the percentage of television households tuned into a particular broadcast. That means that about 1 in 4 households in Chicago were watching the Cubs on Saturday night. That’s obviously impressive, but it gets better than that. The second number measures the percentage of viewers among homes that had their TVs on at the time. So, in effect, just about half of Chicagoans who were watching ANYTHING on Saturday night, were watching the Chicago Cubs clinch their first World Series berth since 1945.
On average, the 2016 NLCS attracted 6.95 million viewers on Fox networks, which is up 80% over last year’s Kansas City vs. Toronto ALCS (3.85 million) and 56% over the 4.46 million viewers in the Giants/Cardinals NLCS in 2014. And lastly, when the game was down to it’s final two outs and the Cubs were just moments away from history, up to 12.2 million viewers were tuned in.
Russell, to Baez, to Rizzo.
