What West Coast Concerns? Mariners Holding Own On TV During MLB Playoffs

When the MLB postseason field was set, it was easy to see a path toward TV tune-in success.

The Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodgers all made the playoffs, as did the Mariners, whose concerns revolved more around their location on the West Coast and how that translated to overall viewership, than it did the actual size of their (long-starved) Pacific Northwest fan base.

But as two West Coast teams — the Mariners and Dodgers — are each respectively up 2-0 in their League Championship Series matchups, there’s a real chance that we see the first West Coast World Series since 2002, when the Angels beat the Giants in seven games.

That series, while competitive, notched a (then) record-low audience share of 11.9%, that could be at least partly attributable to the all-California matchup and later start times on the East Coast.

Of course, as we’d later learn, every World Series from 2005 through 2015 would fare significantly worse in terms of household share, regularly falling below 10%. Last year’s Dodgers/Yankees matchup — the “dream” for MLB and broadcast partner Fox — was a post-COVID high-water mark of 7.3%. The year before, when the Rangers defeated the Diamondbacks, was the new low of just 4.7%.

So the fears of how an all-West Coast World Series may struggle could very well be unfounded. The late start times present an issue for some on the East Coast, sure. But big baseball fans would tune in, as would a decent portion of the local markets for the dominant Dodgers (18.3 million people in greater LA metro area) and the Mariners (4.1 million in greater Seattle). The latter team has also never made or won a World Series, capturing additional intrigue for casual fans.

Need more? The Mariners’ 15th-inning win over the Tigers was the most-watched divisional round game since 2011. That’s the same game that started after 8 p.m. ET on a Friday, and wrapped up after 1 a.m. ET on Saturday morning. Yes, it was a deciding game. But it was still a West Coast start that went very late and yet managed to fare just fine on TV compared to various matchups between “bigger” markets over the last 15 years.

Also worth mentioning: The L.A. market has no problem tuning in for the Dodgers (they did en masse during last year’s World Series run). Plus, there’s the extra wrinkle that won’t be included in the U.S. TV ratings conversation — but is important to the overall growth of the game as a media property — MLB’s continued growth and success drawing in audiences from Japan.

Yes, there are similarities here to the case against MLB wanting the Blue Jays to make the World Series, since despite Toronto being a big draw locally and Canada, those numbers don’t help in the U.S. But Toronto has a team, so it’s an area already in MLB’s footprint. Japan doesn’t have an MLB club, so it’s all additional fans that speak to global value of the sport as a media property.

The Dodgers and Mariners are almost certainly the two most popular MLB teams in Japan given their past and current affiliations with Japanese stars. Seattle had Hall-of-Famer Ichiro Suzuki on the roster for many years. L.A. has three different Japanese players on the current team, led by superstar Shohei Ohtani (along with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki).

At a large scale, that level of popularity does make a difference, even if it doesn’t show up in the traditional ratings conversation.

For instance, in Japan, 19.8K videos about MLB games, teams and the playoffs have been uploaded in the last 30 days, amounting to 828 million views according to data from Tubular Labs. That’s enormous in a short window, and nearly all of it is user-generated content. It also isn’t far behind similar content uploaded in the U.S. during the same period. Domestically, the league has generated 1.3 billion YouTube views in the last 30 days — but on far more videos (nearly 65K).

If the “feared” West Coast World Series does indeed happen, it appears baseball will be just fine regardless of what times the games start at; even if they’re measuring health in a different way than MLB may normally opt for.