World Series viewership hit a temporary series-high Friday night.
Friday’s Astros-Braves World Series Game 3 averaged a 6.1 rating and 11.23 million viewers on FOX (11.47M across all Fox platforms), up 42% in ratings and 38% in viewership from Dodgers-Rays last year — the lowest rated and least-watched World Series game ever (4.3, 8.16M) — and down 14% and 8% respectively from 2019 (Astros-Nationals: 7.1, 12.22M).
The Braves’ narrow win, which peaked with 12.53 million viewers from 9:15-9:30 PM ET, averaged the fourth-smallest audience on record for a World Series Game 3 — topping last year, Rays-Phillies in 2008 (9.84M) and Giants-Tigers in 2012 (10.47M). That constitutes an improvement over the first two games, which topped only last year as the least-watched Game 1 and Game 2 on record.
Game 3 delivered the largest audience of the series thus far, though it will in all certainty be surpassed by Sunday’s Game 5.* Since the wave of cancellations and postponements that altered the industry in March of last year, it ranks as the second-most watched baseball game and the sixth-most watched sportscast outside of the football and the Olympics. This year’s World Series already accounts for three of the nine largest sports audiences over that span (again, excluding football and the Olympics).
While Game 3 ratings surged overall, the story in the young adult demographics was a mixed bag. Ratings in jumped 20% in adults 18-49 (2.4) and 29% in 25-54 (3.1) but were merely flat in 18-34 (1.5).
Locally, Atlanta turned in a series-high 26.3 rating and 48 share and Houston a 24.2 and 49. The latter declined 20% and 8% respectively from the Astros’ previous World Series Game 3 in 2019 (30.5/53). Figures for the Braves’ previous World Series Game 3 in 1999 were not immediately available.
Continuing a series-long trend, ratings and viewership comfortably outdrew the equivalent game of July’s NBA Finals (Suns-Bucks: 4.7, 9.02M), but the NBA came out ahead in adults 18-49 (2.8), 18-34 (2.3) and 25-54 (3.15 to 3.11).
* The 9.1 overnight rating for Game 5 is a series-high and comfortably surpasses the 7.6 for Game 3, per Fox Sports executive Michael Mulvihill.
[Nielsen estimates from Programming Insider 11.1, ShowBuzz Daily 11.1, network PR]
