Wednesday night, in Game 7 of the 2014 WORLD SERIES ace lefthander Madison Bumgarner placed his team and a city of fans on his back. Bumgarner's masterful five innings of two-hit, shutout relief led the San Francisco Giants to their third World Championship in the last five years with a 3-2 victory over the gritty, resilient Kansas City Royals. Tens of millions of Americans watched the dramatic, gripping affair unfold, one that ended with the tying run at third with two outs in the ninth - baseball at its nail-biting best.
"The incredible 2014 postseason has once again provided
FOX with a top-10 prime time show and has made
Fox Sports 1 the fastest-growing network in all of television," said
Fox Sports President, COO, and Executive Producer Eric Shanks. "Combine that with a record-breaking
WORLD SERIES for
FOX Deportes and
Fox Sports GO, and another dominant season for our local
Fox Sports Regional Networks, and our overall Major League Baseball business has never been stronger."
World Series Game 7 on FOX, only the second Game 7 in the Fall Classic since 2002, posted a Series-high 13.7/23 with 23.5 million viewers, +69% in rating and +76% in audience compared to Game 6 (8.1, 13.4 million), and +88% in rating and +91% in audience compared to the average of Games 1-6 (7.3, 12.3 million). Additional Game 7 highlights follow:
· In terms of total audience, Game 7 attracted 52 million viewers who watched all or part of the game, making it the second most-watched baseball game since Game 4 of the 2004 World Series. It is the most-watched sports event since the Sochi Olympics (58.6 million) and most-watched program since
THE ACADEMY AWARDS in March (68.5 million).
· Game 7 is +22% in rating and +23% in audience over last year's Series-clinching Game 6 between the Cardinals and Red Sox (11.3/18 - 19.2 million).
· From 8:06-11:00 PM ET,
FOX averaged a 13.3/22 in prime time which projects to be the network's best performance on a Wednesday night since May 2011.
· Game 7 is also FOX's highest-rated prime-time broadcast of the television season, and the network's best (excluding
SUPER BOWL Sunday) since January 2013.
· Ranks as the network's best non-NFL rating since Game 7 of the 2011 World Series
· Last night's prime-time performance projects to rank as FOX's best since the
SUPER BOWL in February.
·
FOX is expected to finish in first place in prime time in Households and Adults 18-49.
· Combined with
FOX Deportes (see below), last night's game averaged 23.9 million viewers.
· Initial tune-in was a 9.5 with 16.2 million viewers from 8:00-8:30 PM ET and peaked at a 16.2 with 27.8 million viewers from 11:00-11:29 PM ET as the San Francisco Giants recorded the final out.
· Kansas City turned out in force to watch the finale of their Royals' thrilling postseason run, posting its highest metered market rating for any MLB game on record - 58.3/77. (Note: Kansas City was not a metered market during the Royals' last
WORLD SERIES appearance in 1985). San Francisco's 38.8/64 was the best MLB rating for the Bay Area since Game 7 of the 2002 World Series.
·
FOX Deportes' telecast of Game 7 was the most-watched MLB game ever in the network's history with 373,000 total viewers, +90% from Game 7 in 2011 (196,000). The game peaked from 11:00-11:30 PM ET with 546,000 viewers, breaking the previous record from Game 6, making it the channel's most-watched half-hour this postseason.
· The day of Game 7 marks a new record for authenticated viewership for
Fox Sports GO. This new record crushed the prior best day ever for GO (10/22/14, Game 2 of this Series) by 43%.
World Series Summary
· The seven games of the 2014
WORLD SERIES on
FOX averaged an 8.2/14 with 13.8 million viewers, +8% in rating and +9% in audience compared to 2012, the last time the Giants appeared in the Fall Classic (7.6/12, 12.7 million viewers).
· The 25 hours of the 2014
WORLD SERIES averaged a 3.7 in A18-49, raising FOX's season-to-date prime-time average in the demo by +20% (2.0 to 2.4) and had as much impact on the prime-time ratings race as an entire season of a top-10 show.
· Combined with
FOX Deportes, the 2014
WORLD SERIES averaged 14.1 million viewers per telecast, +10% better than 2012 (12.8 million).
· The
WORLD SERIES on
FOX has provided
FOX prime-time victories in Adults 18-49 on six of the seven nights it aired, and ranks sixth as the highest-rated program in prime time broadcast television.
·
FOX Deportes averaged 267,000 total viewers, making it the largest
WORLD SERIES audience in Spanish-language television history.
· The MLB Postseason has helped propel
Fox Sports GO to nearly two million total downloads.
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