Dodgers-Yankees finale tops 18 million mark

Oct 30, 2024; New York, New York, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani (17) celebrates after winning the 2024 MLB World Series against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

The Dodgers-Yankees World Series finished, as expected, on a high note.

Wednesday’s Dodgers-Yankees World Series Game 5 averaged a 9.0 rating and 18.15 million viewers on FOX (18.6M including Fox Deportes and streaming), marking the largest World Series audience since Game 7 of the 2019 series and the top Game 5 audience since Dodgers-Astros in 2017 (18.94M). Keep in mind the 2018 Red Sox-Dodgers Game 5 (17.63M) would have almost certainly finished with a larger audience had out-of-home viewing been tracked in Nielsen estimates at that time.

The Dodgers’ comeback win, which peaked with 21.27 million in the 11:15 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 50% and 58% respectively from last year’s Rangers-Diamondbacks clincher (6.0, 11.48M).

On a Nielsen-only basis, Game 5 of the Fall Classic outdrew every NBA and men’s college basketball game since 2019. Excluding football and the Olympics, it ranks second among sportscasts this year behind the NCAA women’s basketball national championship.

The complete, five-game Dodgers-Yankees series averaged 15.20 million viewers on FOX, up two-thirds from last year (9.11M) and the most-watched World Series since 2017 (18.9M). Going back further, it trails only 2016 (23.4M) and 2017 as the most-watched since 2011 (Cardinals-Rangers: 16.6M). As previously noted, series like 2013 (Red Sox-Cardinals: 14.9M) or 2015 (Royals-Mets: 14.7M) would likely rank higher with out-of-home included.

This year’s series is the least-watched Fall Classic to ever involve the Yankees, falling below the previous mark of 18.1 million for their 2000 matchup with the Mets. The Yankees’ previous World Series against the Phillies in 2009 averaged 19.4 million. Even with all the methodological changes Nielsen has put in place to make today’s viewership figures look as if they are comparable to the recent and distant past, it remains the case that 2024 is a different television environment than 2009.

Including Spanish-language coverage, this year’s World Series averaged 15.81 million. The Spanish-language audience this year was particularly pronounced due to an unprecedented Univision airing of Game 1.

Los Angeles led all markets for the full series with an 18.9 and 53 share. The rating declined 11% from the Dodgers’ six-game win over the Rays in the COVID year of 2020 (21.2), but the share increased 29% from a 41 — another indication of the decline in television viewing. With fewer people watching television, a lower rating still produced a higher share (percentage of homes watching out of homes with televisions in use).

New York turned in a 12.2/33, less than half of the 30.4/45 Yankees-Phillies averaged in 2009.

News: “The Match”, Caitlin Clark, NBC Sports, Comcast

Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Comments 25

ESL says:

2 years ago

Jon,
Curious to know how much of a drop do you think the viewership would be if Ohtani and Judge were not in the World Series? Say it was just Dodgers-Yankees without Judge. Do you think the viewership # would be dramatically less? Or since it was Yankees-Dodgers it would have held up as well? I am thinking maybe it would be about 500K-1 million less a night w/o Judge or Ohtani. What do you think?
Garrett says:

2 years ago

Hey Jon, just a random question, not sure you’ll know the answer or not. If someone is taking part in Nielson ratings and they watch sports via illegal streaming, does Nielson ratings take that into account or does it only register traditional/legal platforms?
Reaser says:

2 years ago

Presuming that NHL on TNT (and simulcast on truTV) did not do good #’s Wednesday night on either network?
- Jon Lewis says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  Honestly I haven’t even checked.
Fred says:

2 years ago

I imagine there could be at least a 20% increase on these numbers with a rematch next year. The good news is that the days of 20M+ watching a baseball game seems like it isn’t over.
Rich S. says:

2 years ago

Trying to be objective, I think this ultimately is a decent but not great result considering the reality of present day TV viewing. Even if game 6 had hit 20M it wouldn’t have brought the average quote up to what Dr Lewis predicted prior to the Series’ start. It feels like MLB got a once in a generation WS in terms of teams, markets, players and storylines, and unlike recent NBA Finals, the games were actually competitive and interesting. Yet the numbers still only look good in comparison to the post-Covid landscape, and look mediocre compared to what we would have expected from this matchup in the 2010s. I think it’s just the reality moving forward for MLB and the NBA- even if you get your absolute dream match up, and the series is a good one, you’re not going to come close to averaging 20M ever again. The casual interest isn’t there, and viewing generally is just too fractured in this day and age.
ESL says:

2 years ago

These are very good numbers, but I do think MLB and Fox expected more. I am not suprirsed. Yes, many say for the current television environment, these are phenomenal numbers. However, for an event of this magnitude (Yankees-Dodgers, Ohtani, Judge), these numbers should have been higher. 2 main factors. 1. The schedule. MLB has to go back to the Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun, Tue, Wed schedule. The current schedule is really tough. Hard to build momentum. You start on Friday and Saturday, and then game 3 is against MNF. Its not until game 4 that you have a great viewership night without football competition. i think game 1 and 2 would have been significantly higher if it was Tuesday and Wednesday. The second reason the viewership was not as high as it should have been is baseball itself. MLB has to do something about the current state of the game. The constant pitching changes throughout the World Series definitely makes it a challenge to sit through a full game. Analytics really changed baseball for the worse. I know baseball loyalists will say “old man get off my lawn”, but, this is an issue for the younger generation. There is no flow to these games. Once you see a rally happening, there is a pitching change. The starting pitcher in MLB used to be as big as the QB. They were the star players. Now they are just a random player that gets to the bullpen. Then its pitching change after pitching change. Fans can’t keep up. MLB really needs to address this. I know fans will say this series shows that MLB is not dying. But this was an extraordinary event. MLB and Fox got lucky. I think next year it is more likely we see ratings closer to Arizona-Texas than Dodgers-Yankees. The constant pitching changes is a big problem. MLB should start by reducing the number of pitchers on a staff. Right now teams can have 13 or 14 pitchers, which gives managers 9 to 10 relief pitchers a night to use. If they limit the rosters to 11 pitchers, the starters will have to train to go longer because the manager will not have as many options in the bullpen. This would be a game changer and help the flow of the game. I hope MLB does address the pitching situation.
- Brian says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  The average time of game for postseason games was roughly a half-hour shorter in 2024 compared to the last years before the pitch clock. The games are not dragging. They are moving as fast as they did 30 years ago when you take into account the additional commercial time that pads the overall game time by 30 minutes. With respect to younger viewers, all of the data show MLB’s audience growing among that cohort. For the first two games of the World Series, the 18-34 audience was up 93 percent from 2022, whereas the overall audience was up “only” 56 percent.
- Richard says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  MLB won’t change the WS schedule because with a Friday start, games 1&2 (and 6&7 if it gets that far) are on the weekend (all 9AM times) in Japan while with a Tuesday start, only games 3&4 would be on the weekend in Japan. And there were about as many viewers of this WS in Japan as in the US. MLB just won’t sacrifice potentially tens of millions of extra Japanese viewers just to gain maybe a couple million more American viewers.
RR says:

2 years ago

Imagine what this could’ve gotten if it went to seven games. I’m guessing 25-30 million. I wonder if anything besides football could draw those sorts of numbers?
Jeff says:

2 years ago

So now we know for certain: Game 6 would’ve cleared 20 million, and Game 7 well north of that. I so appreciate the posts on this site. Specifically, I respect the analysis of the data, always with an eye toward perspective and context. There is a lot of lazy reporting out there, particularly in this world of news aggregator sites. So many misleading headlines designed to collect clicks. This World Series performed very well considering recent history and the fact that it went only five games. But it was not “record-breaking”, unless we are talking about streaming, Spanish language telecasts, or the Japanese audience. What a lot of journalists don’t consider is that there is a degree of nuance to reporting, and you need to be sure not to mix up cause and effect. Keep up the excellent work, Jon.
- Jon Lewis says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  Thank you. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the networks and Nielsen do not always agree with you — including as regards this specific series — and it is increasingly difficult for me to do this analysis. So I appreciate you reading and the kind words.
- Alessandro says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  For there’s no “like” button, I join the appreciation words. On this website, analysis and datas are always accurate and the articles reflect a balanced approach. It’s been a pleasure taking part to the discussion about WS these days, starting from your well-written and interesting articles. Keep up the great work!
Alessandro says:

2 years ago

These are gigantic numbers, in this TV era. But the ones who are now celebrating the rebirth of baseball, after declaring it dead one year ago, have to be aware that a Rangers-D’Backs WS next year would again struggle to get to 10 million. This is the reality: World Series’ TV performances depends on the teams involved, their reputation, their history, their prestige and, first of all, market dimension. Like NBA is dependable on star-power featured in its Finals.

But I think baseball is in a good position and healthy, and it’s a pity this Series hadn’t the possibility to show how high baseball can go in its best-case scenario and that, other than football, baseball and WS remain the potential biggest draw among regular sport programming.

“What could have been” will remain the best possibile title for this WS. A big regret for both MLB and Fox.
Barry says:

2 years ago

The local ratings for NYC should worry MLB’s higher ups. Both the Yankees and the Mets are drawing half the viewers they did just 10 years ago. I honestly can’t think of any real remedy for that, if a first WS in 15 years for the Yankees and first postseason run after a winning blitz for a WC spot for the Mets, can’t draw viewers than I don’t see that anything else will.
KB says:

2 years ago

Very good numbers overall in this post Covid era. Game 6 would have done 21-22 mil and game 7 would have had a good shot at 30 mil considering the very weak college football comp in prime time this Saturday. Still a healthy sign for MLB.
Richard says:

2 years ago

Note that the WS drew about the same number of viewers in Japan, which is pretty insane when you note that Japan has a fraction the population of the US and WS games start at 9AM over there.
- RR says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  Baseball is a global sport.
  - Richard says:
    
    2 years ago
    
    Well, a globalish sport.
    
    Soccer is really the only truly global sport.
    
    Baseball, basketball, (ice) hockey, cricket, rugby union (and F1, tennis, golf, + some other sports that Americans pay zero attention to) have fervent followings in some parts of the world but nonexistent followings in other parts of the world.
    - JasonKiddfan says:
      
      2 years ago
      
      Global audience for MLB is pretty much Japan, Korea, DR, PR, Venezuela and Cuba are the main countries.
      Ofc there are other pockets I mentioned for major teams
      For most popular major team sports it’s Soccer by far with no one close then Basketball then hockey after that baseball would fit in!
    - Richard says:
      
      2 years ago
      
      Cricket would have fans worldwide than hockey. Definitely baseball too. Probably rugby as well.
      
      Oh, and Taiwan cares a lot about baseball too.
    - Norm says:
      
      2 years ago
      
      I don’t know about today because it’s behind a paywall in so many countries, but 20-25 years ago I’d say that F1 was truly a global sports.
Thalis Malta says:

2 years ago

Jon, what impact would it have had on the ratings if Univision had aired the entire series?
- Jon Lewis says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  Tough to say. Probably gets over 16M.
- Alex says:
  
  2 years ago
  
  Tenis, Track and field, voley are global sports too