Dodgers Win World Series
In what is now considered one of the greatest game sevens in sports history, the Los Angeles Dodgers scraped a win against the Toronto Blue Jays, becoming the first team in 25 years to win back-to-back Major League Baseball World Series.
The Series was one of the closest of all time, with several games going into extra innings. Game three went to the eighteenth inning before a grand slam by Freddie Freeman ended the game.
Shohei Ohtani, proving his 700-million-dollar contract may have been worth it, hit two home runs in this game—although he would give up four runs in six innings during game three. It wasn’t a perfect performance for a player many consider to be the greatest of all time.
Toronto had more runs and fewer errors throughout the series, but could not manage to win a nail-biting game seven, which ended with a Los Angeles run in the 11th inning to end the game 5-4 for Los Angeles.
After years of low World Series viewership, it came back to life. The World Series averaged over 17.5 million viewers per game, and game seven had over 26 million watchers, the highest-viewed game since 2017.
Due to the Japanese superstars, Yamamoto, Ohtani, and Sasaki, the games had high viewership in Japan. Japanese viewership averaged 9.7 million viewers per game, and game six peaked with 13.1 million people alone watching it.
Worldwide, the MLB estimates that 51 million people watched at least some of the World Series this year.
For two years now, the World Series has outperformed the National Basketball Association Finals in terms of viewership, placing it as the second most-watched sports finale after the Super Bowl.
The celebration in Los Angeles led to rowdy fans setting off fireworks and setting one bus on fire. Tear gas was deployed, and seven people were arrested.
Canadian fans were dejected, coming so close to winning it for the first time in 32 years. Toronto plans to be even more aggressive next year, while the Dodgers are planning on maintaining their current strategy.
Some question how long the Dodgers’ success can last. With two back-to-back World Series wins under their belt, the strategy of paying for the best players in the world is working. However, contracts like Ohtani’s come with extreme risks, and having spent about 500 million this year alone on salaries, if they can’t continue making it to the World Series, they may find themselves trapped spending so much on a non-championship team.
