Facing tough college football competition, the World Series ended with a Game 6 low that sank the series average below last year.
Saturday’s Phillies-Astros World Series Game 6 averaged a 6.1 rating and 12.55 million viewers on FOX, marking the lowest rated and least-watched Game 6 of the Fall Classic on record. The previous lows were a 6.8 and 12.82 million for the neutral site Rays-Dodgers clincher two years ago. Keep in mind this year’s game was the first Saturday Game 6 in 19 years — since Marlins-Yankees in a different era of television in 2003 (13.9, 23.23M).
Notably, Game 6 was not the highest rated and most-watched sporting event of the day — trailing the Tennessee-Georgia college football game on CBS earlier in the afternoon (6.7, 13.06M). It did comfortably outdraw the competing Alabama-LSU game on ESPN (3.9, 7.58M), though the strong performance for that overtime thriller no doubt ate into the baseball audience.
The Astros’ win declined 23% in ratings and 11% in viewership from last year’s Braves-Astros clincher, which aired on a Tuesday night (7.9, 14.14M). The double-digit decline dragged the overall series average slightly below last year, with this year’s averages of a 6.1 rating and 11.78 million viewers down 6% and 1% respectively from a year ago (6.5, 11.94M). Overall, Astros-Phillies tops only Rays-Dodgers two years ago (5.2, 9.95M) as the least-watched World Series on record.
The past three World Series rank as the three least-watched. If not for a seventh game in 2019, the past four would hold the bottom four spots.
Notably, even while ratings and viewership declined from last year, the share for this year’s series (17) increased slightly from last year (16). In an era of declining linear television viewership, sports audiences will tend to make up a greater proportion of the TV audience even as they decline.
In addition to the traditional linear viewership, the World Series averaged 233,000 additional streaming viewers not tracked by Nielsen — bringing the across-all-platforms audience to 12.02 million.
This year’s World Series was the first since 1990 in which no games aired on Sunday night. While the NFL dominates Sundays, its lead-ins usually help the World Series to a solid audience on the night. In addition, it was the first World Series since 2003 in which multiple games aired on Saturday, the least-watched night of the week. Game 6 was originally scheduled to take place on Friday, a relatively light night with no meaningful college football competition, but after Game 3 was postponed a day to rain, MLB elected to push back all of the remaining games.
For the first time since 2019, the World Series averaged fewer viewers than the NBA Finals (12.4M) — which after airing out-of-schedule the prior two years returned to its normal June date this season. The World Series has only beaten the NBA Finals four times in the past 15 seasons, 2009 (Yankees won), 2016 (Cubs won) and the two years the NBA was out-of-season. It is of course worth noting that the NBA Finals does not face football competition (except in the record-low edition two years ago).
While viewership declined overall, the Fall Classic posted a 9% increase in adults 18-34 (from 1.27 to 1.39 million) and inched up 1% in adults 18-49 (from 3.60 to 3.62 million). Game 6 drew a 2.2 rating in 18-34, a 2.9 in 18-49 and a 3.5 in 25-54, down 2%, 13% and 21% respectively last year’s Tuesday night clincher (2.2, 3.4, 4.4, pending revision).
Philadelphia led all markets for the World Series averaging a 25.0 rating and 52 share. Houston was not far behind at a 24.0, with a higher 55 share. Fellow Texas markets Austin (10.5/30) and San Antonio (10.2/28) took the next spots. San Diego (8.5/27) and St. Louis (8.0/20), whose teams were vanquished by the Phillies earlier in the postseason, were the top neutral markets.
(Nielsen estimates from Fox Sports, ShowBuzz Daily 11.8, AP 11.8)
