Asian sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports claims that the recently concluded Major League Baseball World Series drew excellent ratings on ESPN. Major League Baseball programs are shown on ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Asia, ESPN Philippines and MBC-ESPN (Korea).

About 115,000 people watched the best match of the MLB series on ESPN, according to an ESS release. Next day's repeat saw viewership peaking at 241,000. This figure was double the average viewers of the last two days' telecast. When the final game was repeated the crucial male segment spent two and a half more times viewing it as compared to music and news shows on other channels.

A total of 2.8 million viewers saw the 2001 World Series, a 67 per cent jump over last year's finals. The number of women watching doubled while more young people between the ages of 15-24 saw the finals. MLB's popularity saw 27 million viewers tuning in last year on ESPN.

ESS constantly tracks programe trends in countries which have a passion for the sport, particularly Taiwan. Then the company tried to customise MLB broadcasts to sports fans. Asian players making their mark in Major League Baseball include Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki of the Seattle Mariners and Chan Ho Park of the Los Angeles Dodgers.