Associated press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dave Roberts had a bold prediction.

“More eyes will be watching this World Series than any other Series in history,” the Los Angeles Dodgers manager said.

Major League Baseball’s dream matchup is the Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Huge markets, extensive fan bases and bright line-ups led by a transcendent star in Shohei Ohtani.

“This is like Ali-Frazier, or Magic and Bird, or Jordan and Isaiah Thomas, or Ohio State Football versus Michigan Football,” said Bill Wanger, executive vice president and chief programming officer of Fox Sports on the eve of the opening on Friday. .

This will be the first World Series to feature five former MVPs: Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers and Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton of the Yankees.

This is only the fifth Series since the Wild Card era began in 1995 to feature the teams with the highest record in each league.

It is only the fourth to include the home run leaders in each league, following Lou Gehrig and Mel Ott in 1936, Joe DiMaggio and Ott the following year and Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider in 1956.

It’s the first with a 50-homer hitter for each team in Judge (58) and Ohtani (54).

“The World Series matchup with our two biggest markets and a bevy of our biggest stars provides a unique opportunity to take another step forward on some of our key strategic initiatives, namely a more national broadcast strategy, international growth, especially in Japan, and increased social media presence related to interest in the Series by stars from other sports and entertainment fields,” said Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred.

Game 1 lived up to the hype, with Freeman winning the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history to cap off LA’s 6-3 win in 10 innings.

Ohtani’s jersey tops the MLB in turnovers, with Judge third, Betts fourth, Soto seventh and Freeman 18th. Ohtani and Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto drew record television viewers in Japan, where the Dodgers’ Game 5 Division Series win over San Diego drew 12.9 million viewers – more than the average 9.11 million viewers in the U.S. for Texas’ victory in the World Series in five games. over Arizona last year.

MLB launched its “Once in a Generation. Twice” ad campaign after the Division Series featuring Ohtani and Judge. It arranged digital “Sho Time/All Rise” billboards in New York and the Los Angeles area, including Times Square and the Beverly Center.

MLB and Wieden+Kennedy Tokyo installed 113 digital billboards across Tokyo earlier this season, one for every home run and stolen base in Ohtani’s record-breaking first 50-50 season.

During Game 1 of the World Series on Friday night, MLB’s TikTok account sent out clips to its 7.6 million followers showing not only the major highlights, but also the fashion players wore to the ballpark and celebrities like Billie Eilish and John Legend watching from the stands. MLB said engagement on its social posts increased 47% this postseason.

Fox hopes the match will spark a ratings recovery. The network began broadcasting the World Series in the US in 1996, when the Yankees’ six-game victory over Atlanta drew an average of 25.2 million viewers.

Since Boston’s title average of 25.4 million titles in 2004, the World Series has surpassed the 20 million mark only once, 22.9 million in 2016 for the Chicago Cubs’ first championship since 1908. Last year was a record low, compared to 14.2 million for the Dodgers-Red Sox in 2018 and 14.1 million for the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros in 2019.

These numbers reflect changes in the way people watch games – less on linear TV – but also a decline in interest in baseball. That 2004 World Series averaged more than twice as many viewers as that year’s NBA Finals (Detroit vs. LA Lakers). The NBA Finals have outperformed the World Series in five of the last seven years.

“We expect at least a five-year high and I think realistically we could maybe hit an eight-year high,” said Mike Mulvihill, Fox’s president of insights and analytics. “It would be a nice surprise if we beat that level. Cubs-Cleveland Series in 2016. That might seem a little far-fetched.”

Spurred by rule changes designed to increase action and speed up games, MLB regular-season attendance rose 0.9% to 71.35 million, the first consecutive year increase since 2011-12. ESPN’s Sunday night broadcasts averaged 1,505,000 viewers, up 6% and the highest since 2019. Fox’s broadcasts averaged 1,879,000, up from 1,875,000. TBS’s early primetime games averaged 375,000, up 2%.

But local viewership fell in a market hit by the bankruptcy of Diamond Sports Group and a carriage dispute involving Comcast Corp. dropped the Diamond’s Bally Sports networks from early May to late July. Twenty-two teams had declines, the Sports Business Journal reported.

Noah Garden, MLB’s deputy commissioner for business and media, believes the marketing and television landscape has changed significantly since the Cubs’ triumph, especially during and after the coronavirus pandemic.

“People have moved all over the world, like you can work anywhere now, and they’ve moved all over the country,” he said. “If you look at the viewership, yes, definitely concentrated in LA and New York, but not all. Like there’s a huge amount of viewership and engagement coming from all over the country.

___

AP Sports Writer Joe Reedy contributed to this report.

___

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