The 2023 U.S. Major League Baseball World Series, in which the Texas Rangers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks to win their first championship since the franchise’s inception in 1960, drew a record low television audience.
The five-game “Legends of the Fall,” which ended with Texas’ 4-1 victory, averaged just 9.11 million viewers, according to ratings firm Nielsen and World Series broadcaster Fox on Tuesday. That’s the lowest average for a World Series telecast since the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 6 to win the pennant in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, when they averaged 9.79 million viewers.
It’s also down 23% from the 11.78 million average TV viewers for last year’s World Series, when the Houston Astros swept the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6.
Only one game in this year’s World Series averaged more than 10 million viewers, the championship-clinching Game 5. 11.48 million people watched. That’s up 3 million from the previous day’s game. Fox also carried the World Series on its Spanish-language cable channel (Fox Deportes) and internet streaming service. The combined audience across all three outlets was 11.64 million. It peaked at 14.27 million as the final out was recorded.
Game 3 also broke the record for the most viewers for a single World Series game. Only 8.13 million people watched fall baseball on TV. 보스토토
Broadcasters expected the teams in the World Series, which featured the seventh- and 11th-best overall winning percentages in the regular season, to struggle with TV ratings from the series opener because they were not national favorites.
However, the expansion of the playoff field and the fact that the winner changes almost every year was seen as a positive. In addition, for the eighth year in a row, the series outperformed all other entertainment programs on the same day, making it competitive.
According to the Associated Press, the only program that drew more viewers than Game 5 of this year’s World Series was “Monday Night Football,” featuring the National Football League’s Detroit Lions and the Las Vegas Raiders.
Major League Baseball regular-season viewership (based on local broadcasts) was up 7% as games were shorter due to the introduction of the pitch clock this year. Ratings were up for 16 of the 29 U.S. franchises.
Nationally, Fox and TBS were up, while ESPN was flat.