The Josh Innes Show - The Farce Of The World Series ratings

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

I'm seeing all these stories about how baseball is thriving because the World Series ratings were huge. Well, anyone with a brain knows why the numbers were up. I see stories about how baseball is thriving. Is it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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get 0% financing. Plus, get $1,000 Nissan bonus on kicks models. This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. I love how baseball people have been dick swinging the last few days about how Game 7 of the World Series had these huge ratings and everything.

And then you dig into the numbers and you're like, well, duh, all of these things make sense. They all track and they're easy to explain. Yet somehow, like, everybody wants to make it into some bigger deal than it is and that baseball is back and baseball. And, of course, like the white dudes in the right-wing media, I want to let you know that baseball is better than basketball because, God forbid, basketball have any audience for these white Republican guys.

Because the white Republican guys fucking hate basketball because it's a bunch of black dudes. so they don't like to pay attention to that. But baseball, they like to dick swing about somehow because nobody cares about baseball for the vast majority of the year. But these dudes love to dick swing over like, hey, these had higher ratings than the NBA. The NBA is like the new thing that right-wing media people like to hammer. I say new thing. They've been doing it for a while. But that's kind of their go-to barometer, right?

They're like, oh, well, what about those NBA finals ratings? Like, oh, shut up. Anyway, let's play a couple commercials and dive into these numbers. because some of the headlines are fantastic. Like this one, Dodgers Blue Jays, World Series sets global viewership marks, and what that means. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's easy to explain.

And we'll do it after these words. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony, and Ziva. We'd like to make up our own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition.

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. All right, here we go. So let's go to that story from the L.A. Times, assuming there's not a paywall, but there may be. Let's see.

All right. There is a paywall. Let me read the damn story. Bitches. Game 7 drew a record 51 million viewers across the U.S., Canada, and Japan, the most watched MLB game since the 1991 World Series. The series, 34 million average viewers made it the largest global World Series audience since 1992, bolstered by a record international viewership from Japan and Canada. Well, there you solved it. I don't even have to read the story to tell you the reality of the story. The reason the numbers are so high, Shohei Otani is in the

World Series. He is Japanese. He's got a gigantic Japanese following. Canada, relatively populous country, not the most populous country, but a very populous country that happens to be right here. And they happen to have, what, a Major League Baseball team? And that Major League Baseball team happened to be the other team in the World Series. Two years ago, the Dodgers set out to become Japan's team. The Toronto Blue Jays are Canada's team. When the two teams collided in this year's World Series, ratings hit the stratosphere. The deciding game seven of the World Series attracted 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan. Major League Baseball said Wednesday, making it the most watched

game since 1991's Game 7, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's pretty crazy to think. This is wild. So up until that point, the most watched MLB game, since game 7. The most watched MLB game that was in 1991. Jack Buck was the TV play-by-play guy in 1991. That would have been what, the Braves and the Twins, 1991. Jack Buck, that was the Kirby Puckett one.

Think about how long ago that was. This is the most watched baseball game since Jack Buck was calling the game on television. That is nuts. In the U.S. alone, an average of 16.1 million viewers watched each game an increase from last year, even with the Yankees out and Canadian team in. For the third consecutive year and fifth time in six years, the World Series had a higher rating than the NBA finals. This year, 56% higher. The strong World Series ratings and attendance that rose for the fourth consecutive year, underscore the risk owners would take if they locked out players next winter and shut down the sport in a quest for a salary cap. Okay, here's my thought on that.

so like you can take numbers and spin those numbers any way you want and say attendance is up here but i don't see it like i was in st louis for three years or two years the years i was in st louis nobody was at those games and when i flip games on tv there are a lot of cities and ballparks where nobody is in so like you can tell me and find some way to spin numbers and tell me that attendance is up i need to see some actual data and some real life like team by team ballpark by ballpark to let me know what the actual interest level is. Because that could very well be like, hey, one team, like the Blue Jays were very good this year compared to last year and they went to the World Series, so their attendance numbers

were up. Or, you know, teams that are woe-be-gotten franchises, kind of like the, I don't know, not not, not the word, but are kind of these franchises that stink, generally speaking, like the tigers that have a good run and more people start going to the games. Like, I don't believe in using, hey, attendance was up in baseball, thus baseball. is back. That's just an illogical argument because everything is a case-by-case thing. You know, maybe, again, maybe there's a team that had sucked forever that got hot. Maybe there was a team that had a guy that was on a run trying to break some sort of record

for the team and the attendance went up. So that means nothing. And then the ratings, okay, for the World Series do not indicate that baseball is somehow strong. You want to say baseball stronger than the NBA? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Okay, that's fine. I'm not here to stump for the NBA. I don't care about the NBA that much. So I'm not going to sit here and punch you in the face if you think the NBA sucks. However, I don't believe that a World Series that had a Canadian team that a lot of people liked in Canada in a gigantic city like Toronto and a World Series that had a Japanese megastar in it, that's got giant viewership from Japan, is an indicator that baseball is somehow healthy. You know the reason why people

want a salary cap? Because most cities feel like their team doesn't truly have a chance. So you can sit there and tell me about how the Dodgers and this and blah, blah, blah, the Dodgers have every resource available to them possible. So they can go on and spend whatever they want. Most of these cities can't. Like I live in Detroit, big city. They're not going to go out and spend that kind of money. St. Louis isn't going to spend that money. Milwaukee's not going to spend that money.

Kansas City's not going to spend that money. Cincinnati's not going to spend that money. Houston's not going to spend that money. Atlanta's not going to spend that money. New York will. L.A. will, maybe Chicago, Philly to a degree, Boston, sure, and that's what you're dealing with. So you're not going to convince me that somehow baseball is healthy because a bunch of Japanese and Canadian people watch the World Series when Otani and Canada were in the World Series. You're not going to convince me of that.

So you can spin it and say, wow, look at the attendance is up. Show me that. Like, how much was it up? Again, that could all be rounding errors. There's a lot of factors that go into that. After a work stoppage that cost the league the end of the 1994 season and the start of the 1995 season, average attendance did not rebound pre-strike until 2006. Attendants soon dipped again as the game times routinely crept past three hours. The pitch clock has solved that. And, okay, I don't know. I hear this shit.

The game times, the length of games weren't keeping people away from games. You can tell me that all you want. The game is not interesting. The game is not exciting. It is a boring sport by nature. So then throw in the fact that the games are three hours long, a boring sport that goes three hours long. Like you can tell me soccer's boring. Soccer's in and out in an hour and a half.

Baseball's not. The Atlanta Braves, despite missing the playoffs for the first time since 2017, announced Wednesday that revenues through September 30th, it hit $671 million up 10% from last year and profits it at $36 million. Cool. What does that mean for Detroit? What does that mean for St. Louis? What does that mean for Kansas City? What does that mean for Cleveland?

What does that mean for Cincinnati? Like, I'm not telling you these owners couldn't spend money. They could. And there are teams like Pittsburgh that just sit on it all the time because they don't have to. They can just collect all their money and get rich and not put a good team out there. But if you want baseball to ever be somewhere in the NFL level, which it never will be. But if you'd like to get to that level, again, we talk about this all the time. The NFL has the ability to have every city believe they have a chance, unless you have like a really shitty owner or something.

But for the most part, the NFL has the ability to make you feel like your team, no matter what city you're in has a chance. And the reality is, your team does. Kansas City has a powerhouse. Green Bay has one of the all-time great franchises. I mean, look, I'm telling you all of it. You see this. Cincinnati was solid before Joe Burrow got her.

I mean, like, any of these cities have a chance. The issue in basketball and baseball is that is not the case. When you go to a game in Charlotte, your team does not have a chance. When you go to a football game in Charlotte, your team does have a chance. That is why the Panthers are five and three right now. Not that there's some all-time great franchise, but they're an NFL team and they have a chance every year because the NFL is built that way. And baseball is not. So I like to see the actual rise in attendance.

And again, you can speak vague and give me general shit. Like, all the attendance is up. And oh, look at these ratings. Super. Los Angeles led all television markets and World Series ratings followed an order. by San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, and Milwaukee. Now, that's also misleading, because when they say ratings, people might just read that and say, oh, the most people were watching in St. Louis.

No, ratings are like a per capita thing, right? So St. Louis is a small market. So a large number of people in that particular city may have been watching the World Series, but that doesn't equal a giant number of people. St. Louis is not a huge metro area. It's a decent-sized metro area. It's over $3 million. It's in the top 21, 22, I think it's 21.

It might be a little smaller than that now, I'm not sure. But, like, it's not like, you know, like people get caught up and did you see how big the ratings were in Milwaukee? Well, Milwaukee's a smaller town, so a larger percentage of the people watched it, but it doesn't mean that that was a huge number of people watching, if that makes sense. Let's see. In Japan, a country with one-third of the population of the U.S., the World Series averaged 9.7 million viewers. In Canada, a country with a tenth of the population of the U.S. averaged 8.1 million viewers. So what you're telling me then is that 18 million of your viewers on average came from two different countries. How is that benefiting?

How is that good? I'm not saying good. It's not bad. But how is that benefiting American baseball? And how is that putting you in a position where you can dick swing and say, hey, baseball's back. You see these ratings? Like, it's bullshit. It's a farce.

It's Fugazi. Like, it's not real. Like, because when I hear people talk about baseball and when I go to baseball games, it just doesn't, I don't see the same. same alleged passion that's out there. Now, if you're in Philadelphia and they fill up the stadium seemingly every game, cities like Philadelphia, yes. I get it. The problem is you've got about six or seven cities that are like that in baseball. In the NFL, you have 30. And that's the problem. That's why I don't buy any of this. That's why I don't go and say, oh my God, look at the huge upswing baseballs on. The people that are doing that are doing so by using basic, like, general

bullshit statistics, blanket statistics, not really digging. deep into the statistics and saying shit like, hey, attendance is up. How much? Look at these ratings. Yeah, that's great. But then you've told me all I need to know that 8 million people in Canada were watching and almost 10 million people were watching in Japan. What if next year's World Series is St. Louis, let's just out of hypothetical.

Let's say St. Louis versus Cleveland was next year's World Series. Presumably neither of those teams have a Japanese megastar like Otani. And last time I checked, neither one of them are in fucking Canada. you had a Midwestern Rust Belt declining city world series please enlighten me. Are there going to be 50 million people watching?

Oh, what if there's a game seven? You won't even have half of those people watching. Well, I'll tell you what you won't have. You'll have about 18 million fewer people watching. And by the way, that's just the people that were watching because of Otani. Then you're going to lose L.A. Because there's not an L.A. team in there. So you have to assume there's millions more that we're going to watch

just because they were the Dodgers, not just because of Otani. So you have to assume that. maybe another five million people. Who knows how many millions of people? Handful of a million Dodgers fans aren't going to be watching. They're one of the biggest brands in sports. So, spare me. Save it. Like, you can try to tell me baseball is back and baseball's amazing and baseball's on the rides and how bad would it be for baseball if there was a work stoppage?

Sure, it'd be bad for baseball if there was a work stoppage. But this is not 1994. Baseball is not, quote, unquote, super healthy in the minds of people. It's not even close to the America's pastime it was. Dude, go back to that 1991 game that they said that there was, this giant audience, was the most watched game of the last 40 years. That was still in the golden pre-strike era, as the story pointed out. So everything's changed.

So look, man, I have nothing against baseball. And if my teams were better, I might enjoy it more. And if I were down in Houston and baseball, we're humming, maybe it'd be different. But as I sit here, like, I'm not telling you to not watch baseball. Do whatever it is you do. But people are spinning this as like some great, big accomplishment for baseball. and it's a farce. It's not real. It's easily explained. Give me an all Ohio World Series next year. Please give me Cincinnati versus Cleveland.

Tell me how many people are going to watch that World Series. That's when you know. And by the way, this is the same thing I would do for myself. Like, back when we were in Philly, like if you did, you would look at ratings. But if there were a day baseball game, the ratings would be impacted and usually it would be higher. Houston's a better example of that. So if we had a day baseball game when I was on in the afternoon, that would get, you know, not a huge rating, but probably double or triple what we were getting.

So when you'd look at that next week's rating and you'd say, wow, how did we have a, how are we up just by such a large number? Because there was a day baseball game that brought it up. If there was no day baseball game, it wouldn't have gone up. Like you have to look at the reality of it. You can't just look at the number and go, wow, look at what we did. You have to look at all the reasons and the factors that go into that. That's all.

what I would do for myself. Anyway, more to come.