Their game with the Oakland A's on Sunday afternoon drew an average of 630,000 viewers to Sportsnet, the biggest audience since the opening week of the season. That's 110,000 more than what the team averaged last year during a season that started with big audiences and finished with mostly friends and relatives watching.
Equally telling was the almost 500,000 who watched the first two games of the A's series on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360. Those channels tend to draw smaller audiences, mainly because they have fewer subscribers than the main channel.
An example of how far the Jays could go came Monday when they attracted an average audience of 836,000 for their game with Tampa Bay. That was the biggest ratings number since the home opener and a serious eye-opener considering that this it's still May. A pennant race would easily produce audiences of more than a million.