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Viewership numbers indicate Major League Baseball’s showcase event still faces big challenges.
Outside of the neutral-site 2020 World Series during the COVID pandemic, Astros-Phillies was the least watched World Series on record, according to Sports Media Watch.
Fox and MLB would argue this year’s TV viewership was positive given the challenge of overcoming Astros fatigue.
This was the fourth time in the last six seasons the Astros played in the Fall Classic. Many baseball fans still resent Houston for their 2017 sign-stealing scandal that eventually cost general manager Jeff Luhnow and team manager A.J. Hinch their jobs.
“A reliable 20+ hours of viewership every Fall that’s over 30% better than anything but the NFL seems pretty good to me,” tweeted Fox executive Mike Mulvihill. “The World Series remains a force in primetime TV and an important contributor to Fox’s status as the leader in live sports viewing.”
Yet, the Fall Classic had trouble competing head-to-head against college football, too.
Fox’s Game 6 telecast on Saturday was actually out-rated by CBS Sports’ coverage of the big Georgia-Tennessee game — drawing more than 13 million viewers for a lopsided Bulldogs win.
- The 12,550,000 viewers for Game 6 made it the least-watched Game 6 on record, according to SMW.
- UGA-Tennessee beat all six World Series game telecasts.
The full series averaged 11,784,000 viewers, which is down only 1% from the Atlanta Braves’ six-game win over the Astros last year.
And this was still the most-streamed World Series in Fox history, with an Average Minute Audience (AMA) of 232,307, up 2% compared to last year.
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