Nationals silence critics by claiming World Series title in Space City
Credit to Author: Paul Chapman| Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 20:57:48 +0000
As unlikely a notion as it might have been in early September, the San Francisco 49ers — the sixth most valuable team in the NFL and 16th richest sport franchise in the world at a Forbes Magazine valuation of US$3.05 billion — join the undefeated New England Patriots at 8-0.
They are now one-half of the way toward a perfect regular season. It’s the best start in team history, and that’s saying a lot about one of the true heritage brands in professional sport.
The 49ers have won five Super Bowl titles (1982, 1985, 1989, 1990 and 1995), hold 19 divisional titles and had the unique good fortune to go from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another from Joe Montana to Steve Young in 1993.
Yet there’s no franchise in the world that had a better week than the Washington Nationals, winners of their first World Series title in club history. The Nats were the comeback kids, not only erasing a 3-2 series disadvantage but a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning of Game 7 en route to a convincing 7-2 clincher. And they did so in remarkable fashion, winning all four games at Minute Maid Park in Houston. It was the first time a World Series saw the road team win every game.
The World Series win will enhance the Nationals’ enterprise value of US$1.75B, especially in brand value. They certainly have the “can’t win when it counts” monkey off of their collective backs.
Despite the roller-coaster ride of the World Series, it was a dud television wise.
In fact, where it not for Games 6 and 7, it would have been the lowest-rated and least-watched World Series of all time. Even with the 23 million-plus who tuned in for Game 7, it was the second lowest-rated and fourth least-watched in TV history. Only the San Francisco Giants versus Detroit Tigers World Series in 2012 was worse.
Game 7 spiked to a 23.013M average national U.S. TV audience after the first six games averaged 12.39M and the first five drew an average of 11.64M.
Yet it was still the smallest audience for a World Series Game 7 this decade (just a little more than half of the U.S. audience of 40.05M for Chicago Cubs versus Cleveland Indians in 2017). Games 2, 4, 5 and 7 were the lowest-rated and least-watched of each juncture of a World Series in TV history and Game 4 was the biggest dud of all time.
It continues a decline that dates back to the 1999 World Series between the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves, a four-game sweep that nonetheless drew a Series average of 23.7M per game.
Is it time to panic? No. It still outdrew everything that didn’t have the acronym NFL in it in U.S. TV this past week. Yet make no mistake: MLB has to do whatever it can to make the game more appealing to millennials — starting with games that take less than four hours to complete.
MLB has the oldest fan base among the big five in North America and the lowest player recognition numbers of any of the big four leagues.
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