While viewership for Game 1 of the World Series between the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers predictably declined compared with the last two years of Los Angeles Dodgers-fueled audiences, it still topped several other World Series games this decade.
According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, Game 1 of the Rays-Brewers World Series averaged 12.2 million viewers combined on Fox and Univision. The figure falls a bit short of last year’s Game 1 (13.3 million viewers for Dodgers-Blue Jays) and the blockbuster 2024 World Series (15.2 million viewers for Dodgers-Yankees), but finished well ahead of Rangers-Diamondbacks in 2023 (9.4 million viewers), the least-watched World Series in history. Game 1 also beat out 2022 (11.7 million viewers for Astros-Phillies) and 2021 (11.1 million viewers for Braves-Astros), though those figures include Fox Deportes viewership rather than Univision.
Final numbers, which will include Nielsen’s new Big Data measurements, aren’t ready yet, but could raise the Game 1 audience even further. Friday’s audience peaked at just over 13 million viewers.
Friday’s audience should be encouraging for MLB and Fox, considering the Rays and Brewers aren’t considered teams with broad appeal, and some predicted the series could repeat 2023 from a viewership standpoint. However, baseball has built a fair bit of momentum since then, and Nielsen’s methodological changes, which expanded out-of-home viewing and implemented the Big Data sample, have generally increased viewership figures for live sports compared to the 2023 measurement standards.
The audience also provides another data point that Fridays and Saturdays are no longer the viewership deserts they used to be before Nielsen began tracking out-of-home viewing. Since 2022, MLB has started the World Series on a Friday instead of its previous Tuesday slot to avoid NFL competition. So far, the Friday audiences have been more or less comparable to the Tuesday audiences from the four years prior.
Viewership historically dips for Games 2 and 3 before ticking back up for Game 4 and beyond. Now, MLB and Fox simply have to hope the Rays can answer with a win or two at home at the Trop and avoid any sweep.
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