A thrilling start to baseball’s best-case World Series delivered as expected.
Friday’s Yankees-Dodgers World Series Game 1 averaged 15.2 million viewers across all platforms (FOX, Fox Deportes, Univision and streaming), per Nielsen fast-nationals and Adobe Analytics — up 62% from last year’s Diamondbacks-Rangers Game 1 (9.35M), up 30% from Phillies-Astros two years ago (11.68M) and the most-watched World Series opener since Astros-Dodgers in 2017 (15.33M). The previous high over that span was a combined 14.33 million for Dodgers-Red Sox in 2018.
A by-network breakdown was not immediately available; Univision was carrying a World Series game for the first time.
The first Yankees-Dodgers series since 1981 got off to a memorable start that included a towering home run by Yankees RF Giancarlo Stanton and — more significantly — the first walk-off Grand Slam in World Series history by Dodgers 1B Freddie Freeman. Viewership peaked with 17.8 million from 11:30 PM ET through the conclusion.
In addition to the seven-year Game 1 high, the Dodgers’ win was the most-watched Friday night World Series game since the same 2017 series.
Game 1 marked the Yankees’ return to the World Series after a 15-year absence. New York’s previous Game 1, a 2009 loss to the Phillies, averaged 19.5 million viewers in a different era of television. The Dodgers last made the World Series in the 2020 “bubble,” with their Game 1 against the Rays averaging what was at the time a record-low 9.35 million. (Those are FOX-only figures.)
Locally, Los Angeles delivered a 19.1 rating and whopping 58 share — meaning that 58% of televisions in use in the nation’s second-largest television market were tuned to the game — and a 13.2 and 37 in New York.
