Chicago Cubs’ World Series win draws 40 million viewers, topping the Oscars

For one night, baseball was bigger than the Oscars.

Thanks to the Chicago Cubs and their first championship in 108 years, Fox’s telecast of the seventh and deciding game of the World Series was watched Wednesday by an average of 40.04 million viewers. The Cubs defeated the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in 10 innings, winning the series four games to three after being down three games to one.

It was the largest audience for a Major League Baseball game since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, when the Minnesota Twins became world champions with a walk-off win against the Atlanta Braves. .

Wednesday’s Game 7 audience topped the 34.4 million viewers who watched the ABC’s Feb. 28 telecast of the 88th Annual Academy Awards. The Oscars ceremony is typically the second-most-watched program of the year behind the Super Bowl, which this year averaged 112 million viewers on CBS.

The World Series audience even drew kudos from CBS Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Leslie Moonves on his quarterly earnings call, who said the massive audience demonstrated the “power of broadcast network television.”

In expectation of the high ratings, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both had commercials running during the game.

Fox Sports said streaming video of the game had 343,855 viewers in an average minute. The Spanish-language telecast on Fox Deportes had an average audience of 565,000, a record for a non-soccer sporting event.

The massive audience can be attributed to the national popularity of the Chicago Cubs, as viewers across the country followed the team’s futility for years when its local market TV outlet WGN was carried on cable systems.

The team’s story of overcoming more than a century of futility to earn a title also probably brought in casual fans and viewers who never watch baseball during the regular season.

Overall, the seven World Series games averaged 23.4 million viewers, making the Cubs-Indians it the most-watched fall classic since 2004, when the Boston Red Sox won their first title in 86 years with a four-game sweep over the St. Louis Cardinals.

stephen.battaglio@latimes.com

Twitter: @SteveBattaglio