MLB Postseason ratings have been on fire this October with some of the sport’s most famous franchises and some of the game’s biggest stars finally getting a chance to do their best work on the sport’s biggest stage. But the interest stateside is nothing compared to what’s happening across the Pacific in Japan.
In particular, ratings for the Los Angeles Dodgers victory over the San Diego Padres in Game 5 of the National League Division Series drew extraordinary viewership numbers.
While the Fox telecast in America drew 7.5 million viewers, the game drew an even more impressive 12.9 million viewers in Japan, roughly 10% of the population of the entire country.
That’s truly an insane total for an overseas audience, but it makes sense given the biggest stars in the game. Of course, the Dodgers have NL MVP favorite Shohei Ohtani, who is probably the world’s most famous baseball player at the moment. But it also featured an all-Japan pitching matchup with the Padres starting Yu Darvish and the Dodgers sending Yoshinobu Yamamoto to the mound. Yamamoto pitched five scoreless innings in picking up the victory.
The 12.9 million viewers correlate to an audience the size of an NFL Wild Card game if it were happening in a different country early in the morning.
Ohtani and the Dodgers just took a 2-1 lead over the Mets in the NLCS. If they do make it to the World Series, who knows what’s possible for viewership figures both in the United States and in Japan?
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