It certainly helps to have the number one market involved in the World Series. It also helps to have a compelling game to kick off the Fall Classic. The history-making five hour, nine minute game between the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals steered World Series Game 1 to its highest overnight ratings since 2009 which happened to be the last time New York (though it was the Yankees) was involved in the World Series.

Fox says last night’s Game 1 overnight rating/share was a 10.5/18 which is 31% than last year’s San Francisco-Kansas City Game 1 which resulted in an 8.0/13. According to our Douglas Pucci, the preliminary viewership should be over 15 million viewers:

According to preliminary data, 15.26M viewers for #WorldSeries Game 1 on Fox. Expect this viewer number to rise in final nationals. — Douglas Pucci (@SonOfTheBronx) October 28, 2015

That would be the highest viewership for a Game 1 since 2011 when St. Louis and Texas averaged 16.6 million viewers. The primetime rating of 10.4/17 would steer Fox to a primetime win over all of the other networks on both broadcast and cable.

Locally, Kansas City had a monster 57.3/78 rating, the highest of all rated markets in the country. In New York, the number was 26.2/43.

Fox also points out that this is the best performance for the network on a Tuesday night dating back to February 2012.

The network hopes that Kansas City-New York Mets will be a long series and if the compelling Game 1 is an indication of how the games could go, then Fox could be in for some very solid ratings for this year’s Fall Classic. We shall see.

[Fox Sports]