Japan has been obsessed with baseball for generations, but with Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani’s first World Series, baseball is more popular than ever in this country.
Game 2 of the World Series between the Dodgers and New York Yankees attracted an average of 15.9 million viewers, about 12% of the Japanese population.
The Dodgers’ emotional 4-2 victory over the Yankees featured powerful pitching from Japan’s ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but fans held their breath when Ohtani left in the seventh inning with a shoulder injury – MLB Post The most watched game of the season, a game never seen before in Japan.
In fact, for the first time during the game, the United States fell behind Japan as the second-largest baseball television market. About 13.8 million viewers watched the game in the United States, which has a much larger population of 346 million, according to data released Monday by Major League Baseball and Fox Sports.
Japan is 16 hours ahead of Los Angeles, with the first two games of the series starting at 9 a.m. Saturday and Sunday in Los Angeles. The match will be broadcast nationwide on Fuji Television, NHK BS, J SPORTS, etc.
The Dodgers announced that Ohtani will play in Game 3 of the World Series in New York, which will once again be attended by Japanese fans in large numbers.
The high-profile showdown between baseball’s two most valuable franchises, the Dodgers and Yankees, is a ratings goldmine for FOX Sports, which broadcasts the game stateside. So far, viewership is on track to reach its highest level since the 2017 World Series. Perhaps more important to the game’s future, Nielsen said the series saw a 93% increase in viewership among 18- to 34-year-olds, a coveted demographic for advertisers. And social media views (345 million) and engagement (25 million) were the highest in World Series history, according to the league.
