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    The Dodgers-Yankees World Series is finally the holy grail of MLB and Fox
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    The Dodgers-Yankees World Series is finally the holy grail of MLB and Fox

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    7 minutes, 36 seconds Read

    New York vs. Los Angeles in the Fall Classic could change the history of MLB TV ratings.

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    It's a ratings jackpot more than four decades in the making, a coastal bonanza that has eluded Major League Baseball since 1981 and Fox Sports since the broadcast giant aired its first World Series in 1996.

    Dodgers vs. Yankees. LA vs. New York.

    And most likely a year-long break from the almost annual post-mortems where the US just witnessed the lowest-rated World Series in history.

    That was also the case a year ago, when a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers averaged just 9.11 million viewers during the five-game series, a new low that performed even worse than the 2020 series, which was played at a neutral venue at the height of the pandemic.

    Now baseball gets the matchup that marked the peak of the sport's popularity.

    In 1978, the second straight matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees averaged a record 44.2 million viewers in the six-game series, the 32.8 rating nearly quadrupling the 4.7 rating in 2023. Three years later, more than 41 million tuned in to the Dodgers' Game 6 revenge game against the Yankees.

    Of course, so much has changed in the 43 years since then.

    The three over-the-air networks have now become four. Cable television took over the airwaves and then divided the audience. Streaming has cut it into bite-sized pieces and pushed the once-ubiquitous cable box to the sidelines.

    And the NFL's growth and quest for global dominance is now commanding attention three nights a week in the fall, driving the World Series from the hallowed Sunday night airwaves.

    But the baseball industry has now had a gift for four decades: The Bronx versus the Beach, Aaron Judge and Juan Soto versus Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts.

    And for better or worse, it will soon find out just how good it can get in this atomized landscape.

    “They must be jumping for joy, capturing the top two markets and having such a great rivalry when they return to their first World Series in 1941,” says Dennis Deninger, professor emeritus of sports management at Syracuse University and author of “Live Sports Media: The What”. How and why of sports broadcasting.

    “The stars are also important. They have big markets and a history of rivalry between these two teams and big stars.”

    Deninger predicts big things based on the starter: The LA-New York National League Championship Series, pitting the Dodgers against the Mets, drew some eye-popping numbers, most notably Game 1, which averaged 8.26 million viewers, the most for an NLCS since 2009 and most recently competed for the World Series number of the year.

    NLCS Game 1 also went up against Sunday Night Football and did real damage, as SNF lost 8% of its viewership year-over-year, even though its 15.4 million viewers had nearly doubled that of the baseball playoff game.

    For this World Series?

    These are once again the two biggest markets, with the more respected Yankees edging out the Mets and no NFL interference. And Deninger is predicting an average viewership of around 16 million, which would be the highest for a World Series since the seven-game Dodgers-Houston Astros in 2017, which averaged 18.9 million viewers.

    After four straight World Series ratings, all of which ended with the lowest ratings in history, it would be a clever reversal of the clock. And MLB has made some progress in this area recently.

    The children remain in the picture

    The once-national pastime has always struggled with the existential crisis of an aging fan base, a trend consistent with the times when TV ratings reigned supreme.

    The 18- to 34-year-olds sought after in the 1980s are now eligible for Medicare, and their children and grandchildren are being born into a traffic jam of entertainment options and social media distractions.

    Still, the league's aggressive efforts to speed up play and present a more aesthetically pleasing game appear to be bearing fruit.

    Fox Sports, which airs the NL Division Series and NLCS, saw an increase in viewership among 18- to 34-year-olds attending the World Series, according to a person familiar with 2024 postseason ratings.

    The person spoke to USA TODAY Sports on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about viewership numbers.

    This jump comes after nearly all MLB broadcast partners posted double-digit growth in the 18-34 demographic – Fox was at 9%.

    At the end of the season, MLB reported that the average age of ticket buyers has decreased from 51 to 46 since 2019, a period in which the share of ticket buyers ages 18 to 35 increased by 8.5%.

    The league credits the increases to its pitch clock and liberal base-stealing rules; Although there are a number of other reasons – most notably the fact that the peak of the pandemic was several years ago – it makes sense that a younger, more distracted audience might be more excited by a sports competition that lasted an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes this year lasted – so less from 3:11 only in 2021.

    Put simply, Commissioner Rob Manfred says that “the increased enthusiasm shown by baseball fans of all ages over the past two seasons is evident in all types of tracking of fan engagement.”

    The gains at the box office and in national television partners are even more important considering the uncertainty in the regional sports broadcasting space, where cord-cutters and the eventual bankruptcy of Sinclair-owned Diamond Sports Group have left numerous franchises in a revenue crisis.

    Bankruptcy and an extended court battle have resulted in MLB producing and taking over broadcast rights for six teams, with Minnesota, Cleveland and Milwaukee joining San Diego, Arizona and Colorado in 2025.

    Diamond has committed to continuing to broadcast games for Atlanta and Miami under the rebranded FanDuel Sports Network. The Texas Rangers mutually agreed to purchase their own rights on the market.

    That leaves six teams – Detroit, Tampa Bay, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City and the Los Angeles Angels – in upheaval as bankruptcy proceedings are still ongoing.

    Even though income and expenses do not have a direct influence on success on the field, there is a significant connection. And while there are no have-nots in Major League Baseball—rather, haves and have-nots—the RSN situation has the potential to exacerbate income disparities.

    Essentially, clubs that own or have significant stakes in their own networks – or have big deals in key markets – will continue to thrive. These include Boston, both New York teams, the Dodgers and, to a lesser extent, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

    Given that three of this year's Final Four came from this group – and the Cleveland Guardians were quickly eliminated in a five-game ALCS – this could serve as a future draw for an ultimately unattractive caste system. And a playoff structure in which a handful of teams dominate – in contrast to the relative parity over the last 23 seasons, in which 16 teams won the Fall Classic.

    For this year, however, the ultimate matchup is a total novelty.

    “You don’t want to be third.”

    It's not exactly like the NFL is the bear in the woods and the MLB and NBA are fighting for second place so the bear doesn't gobble it up.

    But it certainly boosts a league's self-esteem to know it's not No. 3. And that's a plateau that MLB could be aiming for with this Dodgers-Yankees matchup.

    “The number to beat this year is the 11.3 million viewers per minute that the Celtics vs. Mavericks game got,” says Syracuse’s Deninger. “I am sure they will jump for joy when they reach this number.

    “It's: 'Where are you in the pecking order of American sports?' MLB knows it stands behind the NFL by ceding Sunday nights to the NFL. They don't want to be a regular third party behind the NFL and NBA. It's a marketing thing and a pride thing.

    “And if it reaches more people, you can charge more for these championships.”

    The NBA Finals have drawn larger audiences than the World Series in five of the last six full seasons, with only the 2021 Atlanta-Houston World Series surpassing the Milwaukee-Phoenix Finals.

    In 2016, both championships went the full seven games, and the Chicago Cubs' championship, which ended a 108-year drought, trumped a matchup between the Warriors, Cavaliers LeBron and Steph, averaging 22.8 million viewers and 20, 2 million viewers who watched Golden State's famous 3-1 win.

    The 2016 Cubs-Cleveland Game 7 broke a decade-long ratings lull. With an average of 40.8 million viewers, it is the most-watched series game of this century and the largest audience since Games 6 (40.8 million) and 7 (50.3 million) in 1991, when Minnesota and Atlanta went the distance.

    New York and LA will seek this cap.

    “This is what people wanted,” the Dodgers’ Betts said after securing the NL pennant.

    Now we will find out how many people there are.

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