Cubs Win & World Series Ratings Surge To Best Game 2 Result Since 2009
It may not be the World Series that Los Angeles Dodgers fans dreamed of, but Fox and Major League Baseball must be very pleased with how the battle between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians is going. With the Cubs winning their first Fall Classic game since 1945 with a 5-1 win last night in Cleveland, Wednesday’s Game 2 ratings hit a seven-year high.
The primetime matchup scored an 11.3/19 in metered market results, which is the best any World Series Game 2 has done since the major-market Philadelphia Phillies and New York Yankees faced off in the Bronx on October 29, 2009. That Game 2 got a 13.6/22 in MM ratings. Last night’s game was pretty steady with the big Game 1 of Monday that Cleveland won, with just a 10% dip – about what Game 2 of the 2015 World Series followed from its Game 1.
Game 1 of this year’s World Series also was a seven-year best in MM results, and also went on to be the most-watched opening game since 2009.
Looking at Game 2 to Game 2, last night’s matchup was up a strong 22% in MM ratings over the Kansas City Royals’ 7-1 win over the New York Mets on October 29, 2015. To extend the comparison, this year’s Game 2 is up 28% over Game 2 of the 2014 World Series, which saw near-record lows as the Royals beat the San Francisco Giants.
With a night off Thursday, Game 3 of this year’s tied up World Series picks up Friday in the Windy City.
Wednesdays have been pretty good for Fox since the debut of Empire in January 2015 and, even with the absence last night of the hit hip-hop drama, the network earned a solid win overall among the Big 4. We’ll update with more World Series numbers and the rest of what was on TV last night later.
UPDATE: 8:32 AM: The 2016 World Series is looking a lot better than MLB’s big 2015 match-up and last year looked pretty good unto itself. However with last night’s Game 2 win by the Chicago Cubs over the Cleveland Indians putting the series a 1-1, the 4.9.17 rating among adults 18-49 is up 36% over what last year’s Kansas City Royals Game 2 victory over the New York Mets scored in fast affiliate results.
All of which means, with the added bonus of a viewership increase of 39% from 2015 to 17.40 million watching on Wednesday, Fox easily took another Wednesday primetime – and they didn’t even have Empire on.
The rest of the non-baseball night saw almost everyone unsurprisingly taking a bit of a hit. The CW’s Arrow (0.7/2) actually rose from last week, when it was on just before the third and final Presidential debate, and NBC’s Law & Order: SVU (1.4/5) was even with its last original of two weeks ago.
Otherwise, Designated Survivor (1.3/5) took a 19% demo drop from its October 12 airing for ABC. The rest of the Disney-owned net’s night saw Speechless (1.6/5), The Goldbergs (1.7/7) and Modern Family (2.2/7) all down two tenths and black-ish (1.7/5) drop a tenth.
CBS’ line-up of Survivor (1.8/7), Criminal Minds (1.6/5) and Code Black (1.0/4) were all down a tenth from their last originals, as was the CW’s Frequency (0.3/1). NBC’s Blindspot (1.1/4) and Chicago P.D. (1.3/5) were also down a tenth from their last new offerings of a week ago and two weeks ago respectively.
The World Series returns to Fox on Friday for Game 3 in Chicago.
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