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Inside The Numbers: Predicting TV Ratings For The 2014 World Series Between The Royals And Giants

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The 2014 Fall Classic is here. The World Series gets under way tonight, and with it, talk of whether the matchup is either great theater or the worst ever has been bandied about. Everyone seems to have an opinion. Everyone that has an opinion seems to have an opinion about whether the games will be a dud or a winner on television. Yes, every year, the topic of the World Series television ratings becomes the litmus test on the game's popularity, or one more nail in the “baseball is dying” narrative.

We’ve debunked the latter, but this year, the matchup makes for some interesting an interesting case of bucking conventional wisdom. How will the World Series rate this year? Let’s take a look at some aspects of it.

Compelling Storylines Trumps the “It Must Have Stars” Mantra

This year sees the Kansas City Royals and the San Francisco Giants playing to be the best in Major League Baseball. That article stating that this has to be the worst World Series stems from the win-loss records in the regular season. Both teams are Wild Card teams. It took the Royals until the last day of the regular season to see if they might wind up having the play the Seattle Mariners for a regular season tiebreaker with a game 163. The Giants play in the NL West where the two worst records for the league were recorded this year. The Diamondbacks had the league’s worst record at 64-89 while the Colorado Rockies came in slightly “better” with a 66-96 record. With those two punching bags in their own division, the best the Giants could muster was fifth best in the National League with an 88-74 record. The Royals? 89-73. Put the two together and they rank as the fourth-fewest combined wins in World Series history, behind only 1981, 1918 and 1973, and ’81 was a strike year.

But here’s the thing… people have been watching, more so than last season..

This seems to make no sense to many. The Yankees and the Red Sox both missed the postseason, and with it, the idea that people would have interest when there are no big stars in the lineup seems baffling.

It shouldn’t.

Compelling storylines trump stars. Sure, it’s never bad to have both (remember the 2004 ALCS and World Series that had the Red Sox and Yankees?), but it isn’t always mandatory. The Royals are understandably, one of those stories that resonate. Having not made the playoffs since 1985, the year they last played and won their only World Series Championship, the perennial underdog tag has been front and center. But it’s not just that, it’s how they have been winning that has added extra allure.

The Royals have won 8 straight postseason games; a new all-time record. They play baseball far removed from what has been deemed a more popular brand of the game discarding the long ball in favor of bunting, stealing, and stellar defense. The phrase, “Speed never slumps” has surfaced with the team, a reference to their running ways, and how batters can fall into slumps, especially when it comes to hitting for power. This brand of baseball has put the opposition on their toes. Errant throws from opposing teams seem to have become practically the norm when the Royals play as no one is really certain when someone may take off and steal bases. The team also have an exceptionally strong bullpen, so the philosophy that if the Royals can grab a lead in the first 6 innings, they’re liable to hold it.

On the other side, the Giants are vying for their third World Series title since 2010. Having won then, and in 2012, the strange thing about the Giants is they’ve not been a perianal powerhouse over the last 4 years. In the years they haven’t won, they’ve missed the playoffs all together going under .500 in 2013 (76-86) and 3 games out of the Wild Card in 2011. Maybe even years bode well for the Giants.

Beyond that, the average fan may see Giants as baseball’s version of the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA. Nothing terribly flashy. Nothing that screams super star. The Giants are the forgotten stepbrother of the Yankees in that given an opportunity to get into the postseason, they seem to channel some inner mojo in the postseason.

If you’re looking for a twist to the Giants storyline, it’s this: they’re old. In fact, they have the oldest average age roster in all of MLB at 29.9 years of age. Players like starting pitcher Jake Peavy, who came over to the Giants from the Red Sox mid-season is a 33 year old veteran saw his ERA drop from 4.72 in Boston to 2.17 in San Francisco.

Together the teams match-up similarly. While hitting for power has increased in the postseason, both leaned on more traditional station-to-station baseball, something deemed less entertaining.

But, as mentioned, ratings have been up for the postseason, for both the National League and American League. The odd thing about the National League Championship and ratings increases when on FOX (some games were on FOX Sports 1 where subscribers are 85 million, a fraction of FOX) was the two teams involved—the Giants and St. Louis Cardinals—had seen one or the other in the NLCS since 2010. You’d think America would be tired of them.

Or, maybe it’s this: the 2014 postseason has been some of the most exciting baseball in recent years. According to Baseball-Reference, 2014 ranks as the 10thmost extra inning games in the history of the MLB postseason, and we haven’t even started the World Series.

Setting Your Watch to the World Series

If there’s something that could put a drag on ratings, it may be that given the excitement of those close games, the ALCS and NLCS did not stretch out. With the Royals sweeping the Orioles and the Giants winning the NLCS in 5 games, there’s been no baseball played since last Thursday. No dramatic Game 7s. No back and forth series. On the other hand, maybe fringe fans prefer this. “Give me less games and more drama in the games that are played.”

Beyond that, one thing that is often difficult for fringe fans across the country to grasp is when games are played, and on what channel. Games were sprinkled across FOX, TBS, FOX Sports 1, and MLB Network thus far in the postseason. Times range from day/afternoon (as early as 10am PT for some).

That changes with the World Series. FOX will be the exclusive home for the Fall Classic, and times are locked in across the board (barring rain delays). For all games, pre-game will be 7:30pm ET, with first pitch set for 8:07pm ET. Below shows the broadcast schedule for the 2014 World Series:

This, of course, happens most every season, but if the state of play continues as it has leading up to the postseason, it should  assist in keeping ratings up. The one thing that helps the NFL and NBA is making games easy to find and know pretty much down to the minute when they are played.

Don’t Expect MLB to Turn Into the NFL When It Comes To Ratings

Let’s be honest here, just because you could see ratings go up for the World Series, don’t expect them to be what theNFL draws. On Oct 12th, the Cowboys-Seahawks game pulled a staggering 30 million viewers. Last season’s deciding Game 6 of the World Series saw19.2 million viewers and was the highest-rated baseball game since Game 7 of the 2011 World Series. And remember, the 2013 World Series saw the Boston Red Sox playing, always a national television draw.

If Ratings Are Close to Last Year’s World Series, It Will Be a Good Sign

So, interest in this postseason has been up, something that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. But the odds of the ratings being as high as last year are pretty thin. The six-game series between the Red Sox and Cardinals in 2013  averaged 14.9 million viewers, up 17 percent from 2012. Kansas City ranks 31st by way of designated market area (DMA), the measure of media market size with a total of 923,290 TV homes. The Bay Area, which is defined as San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose by Nielsen sees stronger numbers with a DMA ranking of 6 with 2.476 million TV households. There is some geographical assistance with how the World Series turned out. You get a West Coast team in the Giants, who have a long storied history, and you get a Midwest market with the Royals who are the Cinderellas of the postseason. If the Cardinals had beat the Giants in the NLCS we’d have wound up with an all-Missouri World Series, which would have likely been disastrous for the ratings.

The key will be drama. That’s overstating the obvious, but in this World Series, it’s really going to matter. If we get extra innings. If we get wildness on the base paths. If we gasps from play in the field with amazing catches. If we get more offense than pitcher duels. If we get to a deciding Game 7, then this World Series could easily be as popular as last year’s. If that does happen, fans, MLB and their network partner in FOX should rejoice. Because if that does happen, what it tells you is you don’t always need big market and storied brands to pull interest in. More than measuring MLB against the NFL in the ratings war, what MLB needs is a ratings war within itself.

The Prediction

The series will go 6 games. Whoever wins Game 1 tonight will wind up winning the World Series. There will be close play and interest is going to be very strong for the first game or two. After that, everything is dependent on the unknown drama that sports can bring. If this World Series is loaded with it—and there’s certainly the capacity—interest will remain high through Games 3 and 4. Get into a Game 6 or a Game 7, and I’ll predict ratings down some, but exceptionally good given the dynamics of the teams involved and the markets they play in. Get to six games and the prediction is an average of 13 million viewers, down about 8 percent from last year. If ever there were a case for down being up, if those numbers hold true, MLB and FOX will be very happy with the viewership numbers.

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