Big Yankees-Dodgers showdown means big crowds

Major League Baseball and Fox Sports have the matchup of their dreams in this year's World Series: the Los Angeles Dodgers against the New York Yankees.

Given the size of the markets and the pedigree of the franchises, baseball fans have every reason to be optimistic about the Fall Classic's ratings potential. Postseason viewership has already performed well, with the American and domestic league championship series averaging 5.35 million viewers on Fox, FS1 and TBS, the best since 2017.

A similar surge for the series would draw cheers in the short term, although at the same time MLB faces significant media uncertainty due to a puzzle of rights deals, some key pieces of which could be reshuffled in 2025. Then ESPN and MLB did a mutual exit from their $550 million annual rights deal, and also as MLB itself potentially distributes multiple teams' games due to the slow collapse of regional sports networks.

However, those headaches can wait. This October brings the rarest of duels and the bicoastal nature will at least mean Le Tout Showbiz is there. Media coverage and industry attention are already reaching peak levels. An indication of this is the Los Angeles Times hired reporter Noah Goldberg to write stories about the clash's social and cultural relevance beyond the diamond. (Goldberg, a lifelong Yankees fan, described the main puzzle he wants to solve in a post on X: “How are the cities doing? How do they relate to each other?”)

It used to be common for the Yankees to face the Dodgers for the championship, but the last of the two teams' 12 Series meetings came in 1981. In fact, none of the four major professional sports have had a matchup between New York and Los Angeles over the same span of time, although the 1998 Yankees-San Diego Padres World Series and the 2002 Lakers-New Jersey Nets NBA Finals were close together.

Given the likely pent-up demand and recent good ratings for sports broadcasts, the question is, where will the bar be?

According to Nielsen, an average of 41 million viewers tuned in over six games for the last Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series in 1981. This time, that number is essentially impossible, as linear television viewership has declined rapidly over the past two decades, even in sports. The NFL regularly tops 20 million viewers, and late in the regular season rarely exceeds 30 million viewers for a single game, but the Super Bowl remains the only broadcast on linear television that will reach even more viewers. It's still going strong, breaking records almost every year as the most-watched television show in history.

Back to baseball, it's more than likely that the Dodgers and Yankees will breathe some life back into the World Series after a tough few years. Last year's showdown between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks saw average viewership of just over 9 million viewers across the entire five-game series hit an all-time low, having managed to climb from the previous low of just 9.79 million Viewers tuned in to get some respite to watch the Dodgers win in the Covid-ravaged 2020.

Last year's series only featured five games, which certainly contributed to the low turnout, as viewership generally increases when a series lasts longer. The Rangers and Diamondbacks are also teams with significantly regional fan bases, and other big draws like the Dodgers and Yankees, especially together, will draw a much larger audience.

The last time two top teams met in the World Series was in 2021, when the Atlanta Braves defeated the Houston Astros. This series averaged 11.7 million viewers. The 2024 World Series has serious potential to surpass that number for several reasons.

The Dodgers have had a few recent World Series appearances, but the Yankees haven't made it to the championship since 2009, when they beat the Phillies with an average audience of 19.3 million viewers in six games, which means the odds for this one year increased.

Both teams also feature big stars who are sure to attract casual sports viewers, like Juan Soto and Aaron Judge of the Yankees. It's also the first postseason for the Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese phenom whose exploits (pitching, hitting and playing in the field, at least before this season; hitting more than 50 home runs and stealing more than 50 bases in the same year) have turned the game on its head.

Even if the action doesn't span six or seven games (increasing the opportunity for advertising revenue), Fox still expects the games to far exceed its usual primetime lineup.

The channel has averaged approximately 2 million viewers in prime time across all scripted and unscripted programs since the start of the fall broadcast season. The World Series begins on a Friday night and on Fox typically consists of college sports – particularly college football lately. Last week, Oregon-Purdue reached 2.15 million viewers in the 8 p.m. ET time slot. It's safe to say this World Series will likely eclipse that number.

While there is obvious attraction to this series on the East and West Coasts of the US, the international numbers are also likely to be significant, as shown by the playoff tune-up so far. MLB estimated that Game 1 of the NLCS between the Dodgers and New York Mets averaged 12.1 million viewers in Japan, making it the second most-watched MLB postseason game in the country's history.

In the United States and throughout most of the 162-game regular season, baseball is an extremely local televised sport. Regional sports networks that emerged in the 1990s were the default way for baseball fans to follow their local teams. However, in the age of rip-offs and streaming, they have fallen on extremely hard times. Diamond Sports Group operates the largest line of RSNs, the Bally Sports portfolio (recently rebranded from FanDuel, which only adds to the confusion). The collection of nearly two dozen formerly Fox-owned RSNs was acquired by Sinclair and other investors in 2019 as part of Disney's acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox. In March 2023, Diamond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The bankruptcy process has unfolded like molasses over the past 18 months, with Diamond laying out to creditors its plan for how it can re-emerge and resume its former role in the ecosystem. MLB has secured the rights to nearly a dozen teams for 2025. Although some have since been reclaimed by teams, the league has reportedly considered creating a national streaming hub to reach fans in multiple markets. That could be just the thing for many avid viewers, many of whom have voiced criticism of the national broadcast teams in recent weeks.

Play-by-play and color voices from the regional broadcasts do not make it into the playoffs. Instead, national figures like Bob Costas and Joe Davis are taking the lead and announcing assignments. Costas, as revered as he is generally, received some of the harshest criticism of his career during the TBS playoff broadcasts, with vitriolic reactions on social media commonplace. It was argued that RSN calls with familiar local voices could be provided as an alternative television broadcast.

But cable is cable. Sports are all about broadcast television. The 80-year-old midfielder will likely be one of October's biggest winners, no matter which team wins on the field.

Broadcast networks “remain the best place to find the concurrent reach coveted by advertisers and sports leagues,” MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a recent report on streaming's overall impact. “As linear subscriptions and viewership continue to decline, top content continues to strive for higher standards and shift from cable to broadcast. From the perspective of the top sports leagues, a transmission network has therefore become increasingly important when selecting distribution partners. While leagues are increasingly willing to work with streamers, as demonstrated by the NFL Thursday Night Football's transition from Fox to Amazon, this still represents a compromise in viewership.”