World Series Ratings: Dodgers-Yankees Game 1 Draws Massive TV Viewership

Image credit: Dodgers vs. Yankees (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

I wrote last week that the Yankees-Dodgers matchup had a chance to top the NBA finals in TV ratings, giving the World Series its third ratings win over the NBA finals in the past five years.

If Game 1 is any indication, that prediction may have actually undersold the ratings potential of this World Series.

On Saturday, Fox announced that Game 1’s thrilling back-and-forth, extra-inning walk-off Dodgers victory drew 15.2 million viewers. That’s a truly massive number for a Game 1 in the modern media environment.

It should be noted that these are overnight ratings, which are sometimes slightly revised. But unless that number changes dramatically, it would rank as the most-watched World Series game since before the pandemic.

Game 7 of the 2019 Nationals-Astros World Series drew 23.2 million viewers. Two years later, Game 6 of the 2017 Astros-Dodgers World Series drew 22.2 million viewers, while Game 5 of that same series drew 18.9 million. Game 5 of the Red Sox-Dodgers series in 2018 and Game 6 of the 2019 World Series each also topped this Game 1.

But those are all late-series games. Normally, World Series ratings rise as the stakes increase. This was the highest-rated Game 1 of the World Series since 2016, and the highest other than 2016’s Game 1 since 2009. Game 1 in 2017 came close, drawing 14.968 million viewers.

With very few exceptions, a World Series’ average viewership tops the Game 1 number. If that’s the case here, this will be the most-watched World Series in the U.S. since at least 2018, which averaged 18 million viewers.

While 2016’s 22.8 million average viewership is unlikely to be exceeded, an average of 15 million viewers would blow away any recent World Series. Last year’s Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series averaged an all-time low 9.1 million viewers per game, and there hasn’t been a World Series to top 12 million in average viewership since 2019. A 15-million average viewership would rank as the third-highest since 2010, which is impressive given TV viewership for anything but football has dwindled dramatically in the past decade-plus thanks to the demise of cable TV and the rise of streaming services and social media.

If that number holds up, it will likely rank as one of the 100 most viewed events on US television in 2024. In 2023, the 100th-most viewed event was a Sunday CBS football window that drew 15.0 million viewers. Only four non-football events cracked the top 100 last year: the State of the Union address, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Academy Awards and a Fox episode of Next Level Chef that aired right after the Super Bowl.

The NBA finals averaged 11.3 million fans this year. The NBA topped 15 million viewers in 2019, but has not topped 12.5 million since then.