One thing is for certain with this year’s World Series ratings. They will be better than last year.
For the 2023 World Series, the matchup between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers set an all time low viewership average just over 9 million viewers over the five game series. It was so bad it even cleared the 2020 Covid impacted World Series where all sports saw precipitous viewership declines. The Dodgers’ six game series win over the Rays that season drew an average of 9.785 million viewers.
Each one of the first four games last season set all time viewership lows in what was a disaster for Major League Baseball.
The 2024 World Series matchup is quite the opposite in every way. Huge markets, mega brands, and the biggest superstars in the game are all there for the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees. Compared to two teams that are off the national radar meeting for the first time ever in the Fall Classic, this year sees the Dodgers and Yankees square off for the twelfth time.
And looking at recent matchups, Major League Baseball should have every hope in the world that this is the most watched World Series in years.
One thing that’s working in MLB’s favor is that this year they are effectively scheduling around the NFL… at least for the most part. Only Game 3 next Monday is scheduled to go up against NFL competition and Monday Night Football will roll out a Giants-Steelers matchup. That would normally be a huge blow to MLB viewership, but let’s be honest – which team do you think most New York fans would prefer to watch?
Elsewhere, games are mostly scheduled for Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Friday nights are typically bad nights for television but it’s the choice MLB has to make if they want to avoid the NFL.
The other factor favoring MLB is the great ratings they have seen so far this postseason. Every round of the postseason has seen an uptick in ratings and with the Dodgers and Yankees successfully advancing as the top seeds with the most starpower, that momentum should have no reason to slow down at all. For all the grief MLB gets about its lack of ability to market its stars, the fact that Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Mookie Betts, and Juan Soto will all get a World Series showcase is a dream come true.
So what will the ratings be for the 2024 World Series?
Looking at recent history, viewership numbers have struggled since the pre-pandemic days. Nobody is suggesting the Dodgers-Yankees matchup will draw what they did during their last World Series encounter in 1981 (41.37 million viewers) but the highest average since the Cubs-Indians World Series in 2016 should be a realistic goal.
That 2016 World Series was the last Fall Classic with this much hype leading into it thanks to the Cubs winning their first title since 1908. That series drew an average of 22.847 million viewers, more than twice the number of people that tuned in for last year’s series. Game 1 hit 19.3 million viewers and Game 7 was the most watched MLB game since 1991 with over 40 million viewers.
If Dodgers-Yankees Game 1 can hit in the 16-18 million viewer mark, then MLB and Fox will be feeling great. But the truth is whenever we’re talking about World Series ratings there’s always luck involved with how long the series goes for. If it’s a sweep in one direction or another, then it’ll be a great case of “what could have been” and the average could hang in the high teens. But the series really needs to go seven games to approach more historic numbers, or at least totals that haven’t been seen in a decade. That’s where the exponential growth truly lies.
The official Awful Announcing prediction? MLB and Fox will pop a few champagne bottles but with viewing habits way more spread out than they were back then, Dodgers-Yankees will fall just short of matching the 2016 World Series numbers. So let’s go Yankees over Dodgers in seven games as 37 million tune in for Game 7 with a series average of 21 million viewers.
