The celebration that seems inevitable promises to be an epic one if and when the Blue Jays clinch a spot in the post-season sometime late this week.

A fun-loving team that has captivated fans coast-to-coast with massive television audiences on Sportsnet is in the process of finishing off its most successful season in a decade and given the personality of the group, you can be sure they’ll be ready to party.

But Canadian sports fans — and its broadcast home, Sportsnet — best hope the champagne clinching bash doesn’t happen on Friday, of all nights.

Just as Sportsnet is rightfully celebrating its biggest audiences of the season — massive viewership that will only continue to grow into the post-season — comes yet another Apple TV game.

That streaming, quietly added last week, is slated for Friday, when the Jays will face the host Kansas City Royals in the first of a three-game series. Depending on how things shake out the rest of the week — beginning Monday with a four-game series in Tampa against the Rays — there’s a strong possibility that the Jays could clinch at least a wild-card spot some time on the weekend.

It would be unfortunate for Sportsnet, which thoroughly covers all the Jays activity, if that came on Friday. The frivolity of those clinching parties are a hit with fans, who get to see more of the personality of the team they’ve watched all season, a feature Sportsnet has handled well in the past.

It’s possible that Sportsnet could produce its own coverage of the post-game party, though that would pose some logistical considerations as well as waiting until after the Apple TV streaming ends.

Meanwhile, the ratings numbers continue to go through the roof for the Canadian broadcaster, further evidence of how strong fan engagement is across the country this season.

The Blue Jays’ blowout win over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, which finished off a three-game sweep of the Jays divisional foe, attracted 1.6 million viewers, a season high for Sportsnet. Even more impressive, that viewership number came against broadcasts of NFL Week 2 games.

With viewership of 1.4 million on Friday and 1.35 million on Saturday, the average audience for the weekend series was 1.45 million, making it the most-watched series of 2025 as well.

Those numbers are phenomenal, of course, and marry nicely with the huge crowds that have been filling the Rogers Centre to near capacity since August. Sportsnet spares no expense on the Jays broadcasts, anchored by the game-calling duo of Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez, widely recognized as one of the best in the booths in the game.

On the production side, the regular use of a drone camera has served up at-times spectacular shots of the Rogers Centre and the crowds that have helped the Jays to the best home record in the major leagues.

That 1.6 million number from Sunday is likely just a prelude of what awaits over the final two weeks of the season and into the playoffs where the Jays are headed for the first time since 2023.

All the more annoying, then, that the momentum will be temporarily interrupted by yet another Apple TV intrusion on Friday. It will be the Jays’ fifth appearance on the streaming service in 2025, the maximum number allowed. Not all teams would hit that number, but the Jays are appealing to Apple TV on a couple of counts: The successful season they are having is a big boost, of course, as well as the fact as Apple TV tends to reap the rewards of a strong subscription boost every time a Jays game airs.

NO PLAYOFF INTERRUPTION

At least Apple TV won’t be able to bump Sportsnet during the post-season. In fact, unlike the Jays’ most successful playoff runs of the past, Sportsnet will produce Jays games for the duration.

And they are the only “local” broadcaster in MLB afforded that opportunity.

In other markets, once the post-season starts, broadcasts shift to the national rights-holders — ESPN, FOX or TBS — shutting out the local crews. The Jays used to be subject to those regulations, but those rules were abandoned in 2020 when MLB finally acknowledged that since Canadian ratings don’t count for the U.S. networks, the policy didn’t make sense.

“It’s a wonderful thing to cover a team the whole season and not have to sit on the sidelines and watch somebody else broadcast your own team,” Martinez said on a recent Sportsnet broadcast after Shulman explained the rules. “That happened to me in ’92 and ’93 and ’15 and ’16.”

Though the new rules have been in play since 2020, the Jays’ three post-season appearances since then have lasted all of two games each. Should October bring a sustained run, Sportsnet-produced shows could bring network record audiences.