2023 World Series TV Rating

Some will say this year's Texas-Arizona World Series lacked East and West Coast big city teams, to account for record-low viewership. Others will opine that football, not baseball, is America's #1 sport and this viewership nadir is further proof of this. https://frontofficesports.com/world-series-tv-viewership-continues-to-reach-new-lows/

 

More. Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series Ratings Are Lowest Ever

 

People just didn't throw anything up against the WS back in the day - now they do, and the exploding media landscape makes it possible to watch whatever you want. I think the "lack of big stars" argument is bogus though - and I DO think the expanded playoffs does have something to do with it - back in the day only four teams made the playoffs and they were the best teams in the league by definition, they were written about a lot, it built up more during the LCSs. And I mentioned this on the baseball thread - but there really is something to be said about the lack of exposure players get - there are access and language barrier issues. I think it would make sense for teams and national outlets hiring bilingual announcers for their main telecasts so they can do a better job commenting on the players and telling the audience about them.

 

Big markets will provide a bump, but what drives ratings is national fan bases. Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox provide both, but teams with big fandoms like the Cardinals, Cubs and Braves (the latter two owing to years of cable games) will also draw eyeballs.

 

Congrats! This is the 1-millionth thread about TV ratings!

 

Also lets not leave out the hate-watchers - people love seeing the Dodgers and Yankee fans suffer.

 

Also a Friday night, Saturday night and Halloween schedule will tank the ratings of just about anything (other than the nfl)

 

The NFL is America's number one sport. When the Lions-Raiders, featuring a quarterback battle between Jarrett Goff and Jimmy Garoppolo, nearly doubles a World Series game, it is impossible to argue otherwise.

The question is now what is America's number two sport, college football or MLB? The combined ratings of the college games on Saturday were somewhat higher the the Word Series game.

 

I literally did not see a Diamondbacks game until the NLCS. How could I? They play the majority of their games after I'm in bed on the East Coast. A sport with generally older fans loses many late night viewers. I didn't see many Rangers games, either. Two unfamiliar teams equals lower ratings. Also, the playoffs are too damn long. When the Phillies blew the NLCS, of course I was disappointed and sad. But a part of me was also relieved. I could go to bed when I wanted. My interest in the Series was limited to say the least. Not the two teams' fault, but they were almost a business school case of how to get lower TV ratings.

 

I like baseball.

But today's MLB is unwatchable.

The NFL > MLB is like Call of Duty compared to Pong.

 

It's always been bullshit to compare the ratings of football versus baseball.

One is a weekly sport that doesn't really require much of an investment to follow, which means games outside of usual local interest will do *way* better than the MLB out-of-market equivalent. Casual sports fans flock to football because it's easy.

One is a daily sport that does require time investment to follow correctly. Following baseball is hard, especially if you didn't grow up with it in a MLB market.

The game is very difficult to package in a national sense, try though multiple networks have throughout my life. ESPN tried/tries to do the Turner NBA model of featuring only the most popular teams, but baseball doesn't work the same way. You can't guarantee a Giannis vs. LeBron battle even with two popular teams. You might get No. 5 starter vs. No. 5 starter. (And baseball has hurt itself by devaluing the star value of starters, but that's a different topic for a different thread.)

Baseball falls into the same category as basketball, hockey and MLS. It is intensely followed at a local level, but can be difficult to impenetrable to follow at a national one.

I'd love to know what the combined day-to-day over the course of a week local ratings of baseball would do against football, but even that's not a fair equivalent. The only way it would be if is football was broadcast locally. That's the other massive advantage football has. It has never had to support a local media rights model as other sports do.

Football probably is more popular, but it is, and always has been, an apples-to-oranges comparison from a ratings point of view.

And, of course, ratings themselves take on far, far lesser importance with the fragmented media market. I know it matters in an ad revenue/TV rights sense, but as far as popularity is concerned? This ain't the 80s, where you looked at USA Today's weekly ratings breakdown of three networks that had near-exclusivity. The shit I watch, some of it sports, some of it not, wouldn't even register in the ratings.