The hopes for a strong viewership number for Tuesday’s World Series Game 6 were snuffed out early on. The Braves took a 3-0 lead in the third inning, doubled it to 6-0 in the fifth, and never looked back en route to a 7-0 win and the franchise’s fourth World Championship, and their first since 1995.
Game 6 drew 13.968 million viewers on Fox Tuesday night, a disappointingly small increase on the 13.64 million viewers that watched Sunday night’s Game 5. That number was up 10% from last year’s record-low Dodgers-Rays Game 6 on Fox (12.627 million viewers), but down 19% from 2019’s Game 6 between the Nationals and Astros (16.425 million viewers). Historically speaking, this year’s Game 6 also managed to top the 2014 Game 6 between the Giants and Royals, which drew 13.372 million viewers on Fox.
Overall, the series finished with an average of 11.74 million viewers on Fox. That’s up 20% from last year’s Dodgers-Rays series (a record-low 9.785 million viewers), but lower than every other World Series matchup ever. 2019 isn’t the most fair comparison since it went seven games and the seventh drew 23 million viewers, but even through six games, that series averaged 12.40 million viewers, more than half a million more viewers than this year’s series.
All in all, this year’s World Series (and the MLB Postseason as a whole) was a nice rebound from last year’s nadir, but was still largely disappointing when compared to 2019 (let alone 2018 and earlier). A closer matchup in Game 6 would not have changed the narrative all that much, and a potential Game 7 also may not have had the impact that we typically see, given the small increase from Game 5 to 6.
[Data via ShowBuzz Daily, Fox Sports]
