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MLB ends season strong; Red Sox face long winter

Major League Baseball ended its 2011 season on a high, from the frantic September races through one of the most talked-about World Series in years. Many believe too much attention is placed on postseason ratings, but that’s our business and why we focus on the numbers.

For MLB and Fox, they’ll happily take a 10.0 rating and 16.6 million viewers for the seven-game series, up 19 percent and 16 percent, respectively, from last year’s Giants-Rangers series. Game 7 was the highest-rated MLB game of any type in seven years, and the series saw a 30 percent jump among boys ages 12-17.

Pessimists have exclaimed how the 10.0 rating is the third-lowest-rated World Series on record. Fair enough. But the numbers increased as the series went on, gaining new viewers. Baseball’s in a tough spot; it’s so dependent on teams like the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs that if they aren’t involved, the sport seems to lose a wide national audience. It also has become so regionalized — games are everywhere — and that could be hurting the national appeal of the postseason. But in looking at ’11, MLB was even at the gate, it held firm on its national ratings, it created one of the more compelling content factories with the Fan Cave, it seems poised for long-term labor peace, and it also has some wind at its back with strong story lines — the Dodgers sale, Theo era for the Cubs — heading into 2012. Not a bad place to be.

Speaking of stories, how about the sudden fall of the Boston Red Sox? It has drama, strong personalities, back-room machinations and even drinking on the job. But less to do with locker-room dysfunction is the focus on power and PR. First, power is now clearly in the hands of team CEO Larry Lucchino, one of the most talked-about executives in sports. Lucchino is aggressively taking the lead to repair the worst PR crises the franchise has endured in the decade-long love affair since John Henry, Tom Werner and Lucchino took over in 2002. As one trusted observer told me, “You have to go back to Tiger to find a sports brand damaged as badly as this in such a short time.” From late September on, it was one media hit after another against an organization that has been perceived as one of the best run in sports.

In full disclosure, I’ve always been a Red Sox fan, and never kept it a secret that I feel it’s a very well-operated organization. But in the last month, there was little the organization could do to right the ship. It was hammered by a source-driven drip, drip, drip of negative stories flooding print, TV and, most difficult to control, radio.

Lucchino’s a fighter, determined to change the tone, but it won’t be easy. Public opinion in the six-state New England region is mixed with raw and angry betrayal. Last week, Lucchino went on Boston sports talk radio criticizing the media for its coverage and called a recent story about Henry by one of the radio hosts “pathetically petulant and misleading.” Watching him fight the biggest PR challenge he’s faced in New England to restore the appeal of an institutional brand will be one of the top stories of the offseason.

Abraham D. Madkour can be reached at amadkour@sportsbusinessjournal.com.

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