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Morning Edition

October 23, 2025

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The World Series hasn’t even started, but the MLB playoffs are already drawing huge TV audiences in Canada and Japan, setting the stage for what could be another big ratings run.

— Eric Fisher [[link removed]] and David Rumsey [[link removed]]

Blue Jays Game 7 Clincher Draws Record TV Audience [[link removed]]

Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images

Major League Baseball’s viewership tear has extended through another postseason round, as audiences around the world tuned into the league championship series in historically high levels.

Fox Sports said late Wednesday that its viewership for the ALCS, a seven-game thriller won by the Blue Jays [[link removed]] over the Mariners, averaged 4.99 million viewers, essentially flat from last year despite only having one local U.S. market measured by Nielsen in the 2025 matchup. In the U.S., Game 7 of the ALCS on Monday averaged 9.03 million viewers, making it the most-watched ALCS game on any network since Game 7 in 2017 between the Yankees and Astros.

More historic figures, however, were posted north of the border as Canada’s Sportsnet averaged 6 million viewers for the Blue Jays’ clinching Game 7 win on Monday. The figure marked the network’s largest telecast of the team ever, and it surpassed a record that had stood since the 2015 ALCS. That audience represented about 15% of the entire Canadian population, a level of penetration seen in the U.S. only for the later rounds of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl.

When combining the two countries, the blended average of 9.39 million viewers of the ALCS beat last year’s figure by 60%, though the Blue Jays were not involved then.

The 2025 National League Championship Series, won by the Dodgers in an emphatic sweep [[link removed]] over the Brewers, was a slightly different story. That matchup averaged 4.7 million viewers on TNT Sports. That figure is down 17% from last year’s six-game NLCS between the Dodgers and Mets on Fox, a series that had set a six-year high.

Even with that decline, however, TNT Sports posted its largest overall audience for the National League playoffs, through 4 LCS games, since 2017, and boosted its audience by 18% compared to the same number of AL playoffs games last year.

TNT Sports and Fox Sports alternate coverage of the AL and NL playoffs on a year-to-year basis.

In Japan, meanwhile, the NLCS averaged 7.34 million viewers, up 26% from last year’s record-setting figure. That total was, of course, driven largely by widespread interest there in native-born Dodgers superstars Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki. For the clinching Game 4 in which Ohtani hit three home runs and struck out 10 on the mound, an average of 10.26 million in Japan viewed, in a country of about 123 million.

Broader Trendlines

The LCS numbers largely extend a run of expanded MLB audiences that has included across-the-board boosts in the regular season [[link removed]], record-setting totals for the wild-card round [[link removed]] on ESPN, and robust growth for the division series [[link removed]] on Fox Sports and TNT Sports.

Overall, MLB postseason viewership is now averaging 4.48 million viewers per game, its highest level since 2017 and up 13% from a year ago.

The World Series between the Dodgers and Blue Jays will begin Friday in Toronto.

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NFL Ratings Are Up Big, and League Says It’s More Than Nielsen Math [[link removed]]

Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images

NEW YORK — The NFL’s viewership surge so far this season is transcending any lift deriving from Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process [[link removed]], league officials said.

As the league enjoys a historically strong start to the 2025 season in its television audiences, the NFL said the expanding Nielsen methodology that brings in data from tens of millions of set-top boxes and smart TVs does not tell its entire story.

“It’s been an incredibly strong start. We’re up across all partners and across all demos,” said NFL EVP Hans Schroeder. “Those viewership increases, which have been great, have been in a changing Nielsen environment, and one where some of the projected forecasts [elsewhere in television] probably haven’t materialized as much, so we think we’re doing phenomenally well, with more growth to come.”

Through Week 6 of the season, the league was averaging 18 million viewers per game [[link removed]], up 7% from the comparable point last year, and the highest since a record-setting season in 2015. The schedule’s early portion has also included several milestone games, most notably the Sept. 14 clash between the Eagles and Chiefs that was a Super Bowl LIX rematch and averaged 33.8 million viewers [[link removed]], representing the most-watched Week 2 game ever, and the best-ever Sunday telecast in the regular season for Fox.

“If you look at some of the isolated data through Big Data, one of our partners was up, but their Big Data lift was down,” Schroeder said. “That, in and of itself, was pretty remarkable.”

College football has also seen a mix of organic growth and lifts from Big Data + Panel, but even when applying the new methodology to last year’s data, that sport has seen a double-digit-percentage increase in viewership [[link removed]].

After the NFL openly criticized parts of Nielsen’s methods [[link removed]] as the season began, Schroeder took a more conciliatory tone toward the agency Wednesday.

“Nielsen’s on to something. We’re focused on one thing: what is the best and most accurate measurement of an NFL audience,” Schroeder said. “All these steps help us get there, but we’re still in process. There’s more work to be done.”

EXCLUSIVE

DraftKings Is Paying Up to $250M for Railbird

DraftKings is entering the prediction-markets arena, agreeing to acquire Railbird Exchange in a deal worth up to $250 million, Front Office Sports has confirmed. The news comes the same day that the NHL announced multiyear deals for both Kalshi and Polymarket to be “official prediction markets partners” of the league. For more on the latest move from DraftKings, read the full exclusive story by Ryan Glasspiegel and Ben Horney here [[link removed]].

YouTube Stars Help Bring Back Golf Channel’s ‘Big Break’ [[link removed]]

Golf Channel

The growth of YouTube/influencer golf [[link removed]] has helped revive a defunct Golf Channel competition reality TV series.

In 2026, Big Break will return for its 24th season, following an 11-year hiatus.

Big Break was popular among golf fans during its original 12-year run from 2003 to 2015, but then it gained a bit of a cult-classic-like following after it was canceled. Reruns can still be found today on the GolfPass streaming service and other digital platforms.

The new edition is a collaboration with Good Good Golf, the popular content creator group that just signed on to head up a new PGA Tour event in Austin, the Good Good Championship, which will make its debut in November 2026.

Big Break x Good Good will premiere in August, and the show’s winner will earn an exemption into the aforementioned PGA Tour tournament. Good Good’s Brad Dalke and Sean Walsh will be two of the show’s 12 competitors, while fellow members Garrett Clark and Bubbie Broders will serve as non-playing team captains, and Matt Scharff will cohost the season alongside Golf Channel personality Blair O’Neal.

The reboot will carry on the show’s lure of amateur and aspiring professional golfers competing for a rare spot in a major golf tour event. Throughout the series’ first run, exemptions were earned into tournaments on the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, and European Tour, among others. Notable Big Break alumni include Tony Finau, Wesley Bryian, Matt Every, and Richy Werenski, who all went on to win PGA Tour events later in their careers.

Golf Channel will air Big Break x Good Good, as the cable network continues to forge a new path under Versant [[link removed]], the Comcast spin-off company that also includes USA Network and other cable channels.

Good Good has previously worked with Golf Channel for televised influencer-led competitions. Some of its members have also participated in editions of the PGA Tour’s Creator Classic events.

FRONT OFFICE SPORTS LIVE

The Next Big Thing

On Nov. 6, Future of Sports: The Next Wave [[link removed]]—presented by Front Office Sports and Courtside Sports Advisors, with official partners E1, Team Miami, Campbell Capital Management, and WICE—will bring together the sport’s top owners, investors, athletes, and celebrities in Miami for an exclusive, invite-only, half-day experience.

The event will unpack the rise of E1, the return of the FIFA men’s World Cup, sustainability in sports, emerging and upstart leagues, and strategic sports partnerships.

During Emerging Leagues, hear from Wayne Kimmel of SeventySix Capital, Shirin Malkani of Perkins Coie, and Jon Patricof of Athletes Unlimited on why upstart leagues have all the exciting momentum right now.

Want to join the conversation? Request to attend [[link removed]]. Space is limited.

Conversation Starters Peacock will debut NBA Performance View later this season—a new mode that overlays live data like player hot spots and analytics during games. It’s the NBA’s version of Amazon’s Prime Vision for the NFL. Check it out [[link removed]]. Both MLB teams in Los Angeles now have managers of Japanese descent [[link removed]]. New Angels manager Kurt Suzuki is fourth-generation Japanese from Hawai‘i, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was born in Okinawa to a Japanese mother. Don Mattingly has spent more than 40 years in MLB as a player, manager, and coach. Now, as the Blue Jays’ bench coach [[link removed]], he’s heading to his first World Series. Editors’ Picks Tony Vitello’s Stunning MLB Jump Comes With $3M Tennessee Buyout [[link removed]]by Margaret Fleming [[link removed]]Vitello heads to San Francisco after winning a national championship in 2024. NBA Wants to Launch European League in ‘Next Two Years’ [[link removed]]by Colin Salao [[link removed]]The league is eyeing 10–12 cities for its European venture. Texas Tech Is Attempting a Tortilla Crackdown [[link removed]]by Andrew Goodrich [[link removed]]Rebellious students are known to smuggle the tortillas in their underwear. Question of the Day

Do you plan to watch the World Series?

YES [[link removed]] NO [[link removed]]

Wednesday’s result: 12% of respondents would like to see the NFL play a regular-season game in Saudi Arabia.

Advertise [[link removed]] Awards [[link removed]] Learning [[link removed]] Events [[link removed]] Video [[link removed]] Show [[link removed]] Written by Eric Fisher [[link removed]], David Rumsey [[link removed]] Edited by Matthew Tabeek [[link removed]], Catherine Chen [[link removed]]

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