Major League Baseball finished the postseason strong with its most watched World Series since 2017.
The Los Angeles Dodgers' come-from-behind win over the New York Yankees in game five on Oct. 30 averaged 18.15 million on Fox Corp.'s FOX (US), according to Nielsen Holdings PLC data. Tacking on another 447,000 from FOX Deportes (US) coverage and those watching on FOX Sports digital outlets, game five averaged 18.6 million viewers.
That was up 58% from the 11.48 million who saw the Texas Rangers top the Arizona Diamondbacks in game five to win the 2023 World Series. It also marked the second-most watched game five since the 2017 World Series when 19.6 million watched the Dodgers and Houston Astros square off.
Across all networks, including the 1.05 million who screened Univision (US)'s coverage of game one, the 2024 World Series averaged 15.8 million views. That was the largest audience since the Dodgers-Astros matchup in 2017 and ranks as the fourth-largest overall World Series viewing audience since 2010.
The three series with higher ratings — the Dodgers-Astros in 2017, the Chicago Cubs-Cleveland Indians in 2016, and the St. Louis Cardinals-Rangers in 2011 — all went to seven games.
Dodgers-Yankees was up 74% from the 9.11 million viewer average, an all-time World Series low, for the five-game Rangers-Diamondbacks series in 2023.
Grand slam
Excluding football and the Olympics, game five of Dodgers-Yankees was the second-most watched sportscast since 2019, behind the 18.9 million who saw the South Carolina Gamecocks complete their undefeated season over Caitlin Clark's Iowa Hawkeyes in the NCAA women's basketball national championship across Walt Disney Co.'s networks earlier this year.
The 2024 World Series benefited from a number of factors. The Yankees and Dodgers are housed in the No. 1 and No. 2 TV markets, respectively. Both teams include marquee players, including the presumptive National League and American League most valuable players in Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.
Overall, the strong viewership underscores the continued importance of live sports to network owners and advertisers. As content is sliced and diced to appear across linear, mobile, digital, desktop social and connected TV screens, sports has shown an ability to aggregate large audiences.
Earlier-round scorecards
Viewership for the rest of MLB's postseason also registered year-over-year increases.
The League Championship Series averaged a combined 5.35 million watchers, up 3% from 2023. In the American League, the Yankees topped the Cleveland Guardians in five games on Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.'s TBS (US) and truTV (US). In the National League, the Dodgers eliminated the New York Mets in a six-game series carried on FOX Sports outlets.
The MLB Division Series averaged 3.56 million viewers across FOX, FOX Sports 1 (US) and TBS and TNT. That was up 14% from 2023 and the highest average since 2017.
Disney opened the playoffs by scoring an average of 2.82 million viewers for nine games across ABC (US), ESPN (US) and ESPN2 (US), up 25% from 2023 and 1% from 2022. The Mets' ninth-inning rally over the Milwaukee Brewers in the decisive game three of their Wild Card round matchup Oct. 3 averaged just under 4.02 million watchers, making it ESPN's most watched MLB game since the Boston Red Sox-Yankees Wild Card contest in 2021.