Welcome back to “The Needle,” a ratings-focused column on Sports Media Watch that will break down the numbers, attempt to put some context behind the data, and discuss broader trends in measurement and television viewing.
Game 7 of the World Series exists in the national imagination in a way matched by few other events. Long before there was ever a Super Bowl, a World Series Game 7 had already given the sports world moments like Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run. Mere months before Michael Jordan capped his Bulls career in the most-watched NBA game ever played, Game 7 of the much-maligned Marlins-Indians World Series attracted a larger audience on the same network.
In its heyday, Game 7 — like the World Series as a whole — was the type of thing other networks (and leagues) scheduled around. Despite baseball’s apparent resurgence, it seems like the opposite is true these days.
In 2001, Game 7 of the World Series aired opposite NFL “Sunday Night Football.” Game 7 had ten times the audience, winning the head-to-head 39 million to 3.9. The same head-to-head repeated the following year, with Game 7 settling for six times the audience (31 million to 5.2).
And those were the weeks when the NFL would actually compete with the World Series. Game 7s were and are rare, so no sense skipping “Sunday Night Football” on the off chance one might be played. But Game 2, also played on Sunday in those days, was a different story — and the NFL would take a week off from “SNF” to avoid the competition. When the 2001 MLB season was pushed back a week due to 9/11, the NFL dropped the “SNF” game that would have aired opposite Game 2 and replaced it with a Thursday night window.
It goes without saying that those days are gone. The NFL stopped skipping “SNF” during the World Series in 2010 and immediately won the head-to-head that year — and in four of the subsequent five. But the World Series still tended to earn a strong audience, annually benefiting from a direct FOX NFL lead-in that helped mitigate the competition.
Thanks to a confluence of strong World Series matchups and a highly-scrutinized dip in NFL viewership, the Fall Classic actually won the head-to-head three-straight years from 2016-18. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, it was after that point that the NFL stopped consistently giving FOX a doubleheader during the World Series. Sans that lead-in, the bottom fell out of the Sunday World Series audience and the head-to-head turned into a rout.
Starting in 2022, Major League Baseball shifted the start of the World Series from a Tuesday to a Friday, eliminating Sunday World Series games entirely.
The Friday start means that over the course of a full seven-game series, most games will air on ratings-challenged Friday and Saturday. That includes this year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays Game 7, the first World Series Game 7 on a Saturday since 1931.
Game 7 of the World Series long ago moved off of Sunday nights, the result of a 2006 shift from a weekend to a weeknight start. But baseball being essentially chased off of Sunday nights is the reason why this year’s Game 7 is set for the least-watched night of the week.
So far, that schedule change has not had much of an impact on the numbers, with only one Game 6 in the first three years of this format. But this year’s series, the first World Series to go seven since 2019, will test whether the NFL-avoidance strategy will ultimately end up impacting viewership for the biggest possible game.
Saturday World Series games have always been a drag. When the Fall Classic would start on a Saturday, Game 1 was generally the least-watched of the series. When it shifted to a Wednesday start, the Saturday Game 3 was generally the least-watched of the series. And when it moved to a Tuesday start, the Saturday Game 4 was generally the least-watched of the series. There were exceptions, but even then the Saturday game might be merely the second-least watched.
That has not changed. Both this year and last, the Saturday Game 2 was the second-least watched of the series (ahead of Game 3 opposite “Monday Night Football”). In 2022, it was the least-watched, thanks to a rain-delay that helped the series avoid “MNF” and instead set up an easier matchup with “Thursday Night Football.”
That 2022 postponement offers an interesting data point for this year’s Game 7. With the entire World Series pushed back a day, Game 6 ended up on a Saturday — the first potential clincher on the night since 2003. That Game 6 audience actually declined from Game 5, the aforementioned game that faced “TNF” (12.77 to 12.55M).
There is obviously no chance that Saturday’s Game 7 audience will be anything but the largest of the series, and almost certainly the largest of any MLB game since 2019. (The current high is 18.6 million for last year’s Dodgers-Yankees Game 5.) It would not be surprising for it to surpass 20 million — maybe even comfortably — a rarity for non-football sports in the post-COVID era. But just based on the history alone, all indications are that MLB will be leaving some viewers on the table.
And given the circumstances, it might qualify as somewhat of a missed opportunity not to maximize the audience for this game. This has been a memorable World Series, featuring an 18-inning Game 3 and a frantic double-play finish in Game 6. Game 7 will feature Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani on the mound, and while his earlier pitching performance in this series was nothing to write home about, his NLCS start was hailed as possibly the greatest performance in baseball history.
This is the sort of game on which you want the greatest possible spotlight.
The easy fix is of course to go back to the Tuesday start. The fact is that the Friday start has done little to spare the World Series from NFL competition; “Monday Night Football” routed this year’s Game 3 by 54 percent.
And while college football is not pro football, it is worth noting that the current schedule subjects Game 7 to more competition than under the prior format. Because Saturday nights are ratings poison, the networks long ago stopped scheduling original entertainment programming on the night. Instead, Saturday nights are dominated by live sports on the broadcast networks, and opposite Game 7 this year each of the other “Big Four” networks is carrying college football.
None of those college football games, not even the SEC matchup on ABC, is going to come close to Game 7. But that is still more live sports competition than Game 7 would face if it was still airing on a Wednesday night, when the national sports slate consists of a few early season NBA and NHL games on cable.
Really, all the current schedule has done is increase the number of games on low-viewing nights. And while the past two World Series have been able to successfully swim against those tides, the numbers would probably be that much better if it were not necessary to do so.
