• by November 19, 2001

The ball games have been played, the trophy has been awarded. Who watched? The newest data from Arbitron's Webcast Audience Profiles, a service of Arbitron Inc., reveals that people who tuned into MLB.com for the World Series, October 27 to November 4, were well-educated, affluent and active online.

Arbitron's Webcast Audience Profiles is the first audience measurement service that helps webcasters, advertisers and agencies understand the demographic, socioeconomic, geographic and online shopping profiles of webcast audiences.

Arbitron's profile indicated that 31% of the listeners to World Series games on MLB.com live in homes with annual incomes greater than $100,000, while only 16% of all American households are in that bracket, according to the U.S. Census Bureau`s Current Population Survey for March. According to Arbitron, listeners who tuned to the World Series online were also highly educated. Eighty-two percent of online World Series listeners had completed college and/or attained a post-graduate degree, compared to only 21% of the U.S. population who have obtained the same level of education.

According to the Arbitron study, online listeners to the World Series on MLB Gameday Audio are active Internet users and consumers. Forty-nine percent of the listeners say they spent more than three hours a day online and 49% have made more than 10 purchases online in the last year. MLB.com's World Series listeners spent an average of $395 online in the last year with almost half (43%) having spent more than $500.

"We are pleased that Arbitron was able to provide information about the value of the online audience for this year's World Series,” said Kristen Fergason, marketing manager, MLB.com. "The Webcast Audience Profiles helps us give our advertisers confidence that they are reaching an upscale and technically savvy target audience with MLB.com."

The results also revealed that more than three-quarters (83%) of MLB.com's listeners are between the ages of 25 and 54, with a quarter (25%) in the 25- to 34-year-old bracket. MLB.com's listeners are predominantly male (89%). Sixty percent of the listening to the games occurred at home and 33% occurred at work.