Strong Ratings for Series Despite Lack of Drama in Game 7

Since 2000, there have been 101 World Series games played. On average, one out of every eight of those games has gone to extra innings. The most recent World Series produced two such contests. On average, about 60% of World Series games have produced final scores within three runs. For the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers, it was five out of seven. Only about one-third of World Series matchups reach a Game 7, but the 2017 edition provided one of those, as well. The Astros and Dodgers both scored 34 runs. It’s hard to ask for more than we received — and the television ratings from the World Series reflect the appeal of the games.

The only piece really missing from this season’s championship was some real drama in the final game — and we almost got that, as well. Yes, the Astros quickly took a 5-0 lead and conceded just a single run over nine total innings. In five of those first six innings, though, their opponents recorded a run expectancy of at least .86 runs. While they scored a single run in the sixth inning, probability suggests that it “should” have been more. By the numbers, the Dodgers possessed greater than an 80% chance of scoring at least twice and a 50% chance of coming through three times. A 5-3 or 5-4 lead heading into the ninth would have made for some compelling baseball.

As it happened, the Dodgers didn’t live up to their probabilities over the first six innings, and the game lacked the sort of tension that would have drawn a few more eyeballs. Regardless, the World Series performed strongly in the television ratings for the second straight season. In 2004, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals and recorded a very high 15.8 rating That figure probably actually understated interest in the series: had it produced a couple elimination games, the ratings would have been even higher.

In the 11 seasons after the Cardinals-Red Sox contest, the World Series averaged a 9.4 rating, failing to hit double-digits after 2009, when the Yankees won their last championship. Last season reversed the trend, accruing a 12.9. This season followed suit with a strong 10.6, lacking the advantage of a Cubs teams looking to end its 100-plus-year drought.

This is what World Series ratings look like over the last 30 years or so.

The raw numbers might lead one to believe that interest in baseball has been steadily waning among the public. Context is important, though. Let’s look at those same numbers and add in the top-rated television show during the year.

World Series ratings have declined at basically the same pace as ratings for the top television shows. The viewing market is more fractured than 30 years ago. Viewers have more options, so fewer people are all watching the same thing. Over the last decade prior to the Cubs winning the World Series, there has been a wider gap between the top television show and the World Series. Over the last two years, though, that gap has been eliminated. We can chalk up last season’s uptick to a one-time Chicago Cubs curse-breaking bonus. We might argue that this year’s excellent series with extra-inning games and wild comebacks — plus a deciding seventh game — provides a similar story this year, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

Comparing the ratings from this year’s series to the average marks since 2000, when FOX took over sole broadcasting rights, we find that the World Series is a bit down from those averages.

Overall, the trend here is downward. Again, though, context is important. Indeed, the negative changes in World Series viewership are considerably smaller than those endured elsewhere on television. There were fewer viewer broadcast options even as recently as the early 2000s. If this year’s series were to have experienced the same downward trend present elsewhere in television, we’d expect to find a drop of around 20% across the board. Going by just the average World Series game, however, we see hardly any drop at all.

The distribution isn’t even. Series that have featured a Game 6 and Game 7 increase the overall average. Compared to the previous seven-game series, the Astros-Dodgers set produced a drop of around 9%. Considering that two of the previous series took place in 2001 and 2002, though, and one of them was last year’s series against the Cubs, a 9% drop is actually very strong relative overall watching trends.

Now we can also make the argument that this year’s series was particularly appealing due to the exciting games. This year we saw two extra-inning games and only two matchups where the margin of victory was four runs or greater. The abundance of close games and the length of the series confer a significant advantage when it comes to ratings. Here’s how this year’s series performed by a few different factors.

We should probably take the increased ratings for blowouts with a grain of salt, as one of the blowouts that occurred in the Astros-Dodgers series was Game 7, which was going to receive good ratings regardless. We see that, in the three close games that didn’t enter extra innings, there was a decline consistent with the seven-game-series drops we saw above. We also see a bigger drop in the extra-innings games. Of course, one of the extra-inning games was Game 7 last year. Removing that game from this relatively small sample renders the drop closer to 10%.

So ratings were down a bit for this year’s Game 7, though much of that can be blamed on the relative low leverage index throughout the contest. In the five most recent Game 7s, there was a 73% increase in rating over the previous six-game average. This season, that jump was around 60%, which is consistent with the difference between a close game and a blowout.

We know more people watch close games and extra-inning games. As such, it’s not surprising that Game 2 and Game 5 got much better ratings than Games 1, 3, and 4 this season. What that last tables seems to indicate is that there wasn’t anything particularly unique about the ratings in those games. The ratings for Game 6 were fantastic, and the ratings for Game 7 were in line with what we might expect given the overall ratings for the series. Because these numbers are roughly in line with expectations for these types of games, but ratings overall were up over the previous decade, we can say that there was simply more interest in the World Series this season than there has been in past years.

Perhaps it was a good postseason lead-in. Maybe last year’s series had people hungry for more. Los Angeles as a market helps, but likely wasn’t a huge driver here. The World Series is bucking some trends from the previous decade. Even if the series had ended after five games — and thus lacked a clinching bump — only the epic 2011 series and last year’s iteration would have had higher ratings in this decade. While everyone in the industry is fighting declining ratings, the World Series has held its ground. That’s a very good sign for baseball.