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MLB’s switch to a Friday start for the World Series has never had as big a viewership impact as it did this year.
Fox Sports is projecting to end this year’s World Series, won for the first time by the Brewers over the Rays, with an average audience of 11.83 million viewers. This figure, while down by nearly a quarter from particularly bullish results in 2025 and 2024 with the presence of the Dodgers, is still higher than other Fall Classics held this decade.
The game-by-game viewership results, however, showed the significant impact of MLB’s pivot in 2022 to a Friday start for the World Series. After starting the event on a Tuesday or Wednesday for many years—and not at all on a Friday since 1915—the league made the move to reduce its competition for viewers with the NFL, perennially the most-watched programming in all of U.S. television.
MLB’s shift for the World Series broadcast schedule lessened the potential overlap with the NFL from as many as four games to just one.
That single night of competition with the NFL this year was felt in historic fashion. Fox Sports generated an audience of just 8.33 million viewers for Monday’s Game 3, marking the fourth-lowest World Series game on record. The audience was also the lowest for the World Series in Nielsen’s current measurement era with expanded out-of-home measurement, the new Big Data + Panel process, and this year’s improved counting of co-viewing.
Monday Night Football on ESPN and related Disney platforms more than doubled that figure, averaging 18.8 million viewers and highlighting the 33rd “sports equinox,” a day that had games in all four major U.S. men’s sports leagues—as well as a WNBA Finals game.
The other four World Series games, conversely, all reached eight figures in average viewers. The clinching Game 5 won by Milwaukee, has a preliminary average audience figure of 14.22 million viewers. That far exceeds a roughly comparable 2023 World Series Game 5 involving the Rangers and Diamondbacks. That earlier game, completing a five-game Fall Classic win for Texas, averaged 11.48 million viewers to cap the least-watched World Series in history.
During each of the past three seasons, Game 3 of the World Series was also the least-watched broadcast of the event as it went up against MNF, but not nearly to the degree as this year. The high-profile 2024 matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees even pulled off a rare head-to-head win, posting higher viewership than a competing Giants–Steelers game.
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