US World Series viewers drop 14% for first two games of Dodgers-Blue Jays matchup

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — U.S. viewers for the first two games of the World Series between the Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays dropped 14% from last year's matchup between Los Angeles and the New York Yankees, but Canadian and Japanese audiences set records.

Last year's first two games averaged 14.55 million and this year's first two averaged 12.5 million on Fox, Fox Deportes, Fox One streaming, the Fox Sports app and Univision, Major League Baseball said Tuesday.

MLB said the combined 32.6 million viewers for the opener in the U.S., Canada and Japan were its highest since the Chicago Cubs ended their 108-year title drought by beating Cleveland in Game 7 of the 2016 Series.

Toronto's 11-4 win in Game 1 averaged 13,305,000 and Los Angeles' 5-1 victory in Game 2, which did not include Univision coverage, averaged 11.63 million, Fox said.

Los Angeles' 6-3, 10-inning win in last year's opener that ended with Freddie Freeman's grand slam was seen by 15.2 million, the most-watched Series game since 2019. The Dodgers' 4-2 victory in Game 2 last year was viewed by 13.44 million.

Game 1 this year drew 7 million viewers in Canada and Game 2 was watched by 6.6 million, the two most-watched Blue Jays games on Sportsnet. The network is owned by Rogers Communications Inc., the parent company of the Blue Jays.

The opener also was broadcast with French-language commentary on TVA Sports and drew 502,000, that network's most-watched game.

This year's opener averaged 11.8 million on NHK-G, the most-viewed World Series game in Japan televised by a single network, and Game 2 averaged 9.5 million on NHK-BS for a two-game Japanese average of 10.7 million.

The two-game average in the U.S., Canada and Japan was 30.5 million.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb