MLB boosts TV ratings momentum in Dodgers-Yankees World Series

A World Series featuring marquee teams from the country's two largest markets will likely represent a significant boost in TV ratings for the Fall Classic. If successful, the World Series will follow a pattern set in earlier rounds of Major League Baseball's postseason.

According to Nielsen, all three rounds of the playoffs saw double-digit increases in total viewership and key advertising demographics compared to 2023. The ratings service also says Americans watched 29.5 billion minutes worth of playoff baseball from October 1-20. That's more than the total of 28.3 billion minutes for the top 10 streaming titles in Nielsen's three most recent weekly rankings from September 9-29.

The wild card round of the MLB playoffs averaged 2.72 million viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, up 21 percent year-over-year. The division series grew 16 percent year-over-year and averaged 3.56 million viewers across Fox, FS1, TBS and TruTV. Finally, the league championship series on Fox, FS1 and TBS increased 13 percent, reaching 4.96 million viewers per game.

Ratings among adults ages 18 to 49 increased about 18 percent during the playoffs compared to last year, and ratings among adults ages 25 to 54 increased about 14 percent.

All of these are good signs for the World Series, which begins Friday night on Fox. Even better for the network, however, is the duel between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees – two of the three most victorious teams in baseball history, which feature Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) and Aaron Judge (Yankees), the two biggest stars of the game game are represented. .

The last time the two teams met in the World Series in 1981, the series averaged 41.3 million viewers – the third largest viewership since Nielsen began tracking total viewers in the 1970s. This year's series probably won't come close to that, but it could reverse a sharp recent downward trend in World Series viewership. The four lowest-viewed World Series ever occurred in the last four years, with last year's average of 9.08 million viewers being the low point.

Viewing habits have changed far too much for this year's World Series to bring baseball back to its late-'70s-early-'80s peak, but the Dodgers-Yankees matchup should at least reverse the lows of recent years. Barring a breakout (longer series tend to attract more casual viewers), a five-year high (or more) seems like a pretty good bet.