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Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jeff Hoffman celebrates the final out of the game to defeat the Seattle Mariners in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on Monday at Rogers Centre.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
The Toronto Blue Jays are going to need a bigger bandwagon.
Rogers Sports & Media set a new record for Blue Jays baseball viewership with Monday night’s ALCS Game 7 nail-biter against the Seattle Mariners, bringing in an average of 6 million Canadians across the three-hour broadcast on Sportsnet, CityTV, and the Sportsnet+ streaming service, the company announced Tuesday afternoon.
The previous record for a Blue Jays broadcast on Sportsnet was Game 6 of the 2015 ALCS, which drew an average viewership of 5.1 million. That game had not been carried on the company’s free CityTV broadcast channel.
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Sportsnet said Monday night’s audience peaked around 11 p.m. ET, when 8.3 million viewers tuned in to see pitcher Jeff Hoffman strike out three in a row to close out the game, and hear broadcaster Dan Shulman exclaim: “For the first time in 32 years, the Blue Jays are going to the World Series” as three long blasts sounded from the Rogers Centre horn.
An average of 2.8 million viewers stuck around to watch the champagne-soaked celebrations, which featured slightly less salty language from team personnel than the ALDS festivities, which had included several players missing broadcaster Hazel Mae’s reminder that they were on live TV before she began asking questions.
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Vladimir Guerrero Jr. grows emotional during an interview with Sportsnet’s Hazel Mae, after winning Game 7 of the American League Championship Series.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
Even so, Mae was holding the mic again in the minutes after the game on Monday, when Jays manager John Schneider giddily swore twice, to cheers from an elated Rogers Centre crowd, while expressing his pride in his team and his desire to win for all of the team’s Canadian fans.
Shortly after that moment, Sportsnet put up a rare on-screen warning: “The following may contain coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.”
Sportsnet may yet set new records, if the increase in viewership over the last two series is any indication. The entire seven-game ALCS averaged 4.4 million viewers. That was up 19 per cent from the Jays’ four-game win over the New York Yankees in the ALDS, which drew an average of 3.7 million viewers.
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The network noted that 15.9 million viewers tuned in to at least some of the ALCS. That marks a 38 per cent increase from the 11.5 million who caught a bit of the Blue Jays-Yankees ALDS.
U.S. viewership for all seven games of the ALCS was not available on Tuesday, but the Jays’ Canadian fan base had almost matched those tuning in south of the border in the early going, despite the sharp difference in the two countries’ populations. Major League Baseball had previously announced that 5.31 million viewers tuned in to Game 1 of the ALCS on Fox, Fox Deportes, and Fox Streaming in the U.S., compared to 4.71 million who watched that game on Sportsnet, CityTV, and the Sportsnet+ streaming service in Canada.
The U.S. population is approximately eight times the size of the Canadian population.
