{"id":943651,"date":"2026-10-23T20:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T20:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943651\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T20:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T20:18:18","slug":"mlb-postseason-viewership-down-6-yoy-heading-into-brewers-rays-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943651\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB postseason viewership down 6% YoY heading into Brewers-Rays World Series"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">MLB <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/10\/23\/brewers-rays-set-for-small-market-clash-as-world-series-gets-underway\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/10\/23\/brewers-rays-set-for-small-market-clash-as-world-series-gets-underway\/\">heads into the World Series on Friday night<\/a> with playoff viewership down 6% year over year, but it\u2019s still the second-best postseason since 2018. MLB is up 8% compared to the same point two years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">Games across Fox, FS1, NBC and TBS\/truTV have averaged 4.27 million viewers, down from 4.53 million last year when games aired across Fox, FS1, ABC, ESPN and TBS\/truTV. Excluded from this year\u2019s average were four Wild Card games on Peacock, as NBC Sports did not release those figures. That likely would have dragged down the year-over-year comparisons further.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">Also contributing to the year-over-year decline were six win-or-go-home games in 2025, while there have been only two of those in 2026. While down from 2025, MLB is up compared to two seasons ago, when the league was averaging 3.95 million viewers headed into the Fall Classic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-media \">The World Series will need to go to at least six or seven games to match last year\u2019s Dodgers-Blue Jays figures, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/11\/05\/dodgers-blue-jays-game-7-sets-viewership-record-across-fox-platforms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/11\/05\/dodgers-blue-jays-game-7-sets-viewership-record-across-fox-platforms\/\">that seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers<\/a>. Two years ago, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2024\/11\/01\/world-series-viewership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2024\/11\/01\/world-series-viewership\/\">a five-game Dodgers-Yankees World Series averaged 15.2 million<\/a>. In 2023, when the Rangers beat the D-backs in five games, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2023\/11\/02\/Unpacks\/unpacks-world-series-game-5\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2023\/11\/02\/Unpacks\/unpacks-world-series-game-5\/\">Fox averaged 9.11 million viewers<\/a>, which remains the all-time low for the Fall Classic.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB heads into the World Series on Friday night with playoff viewership down 6% year over year, but&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,36805,462,66632,82,26061],"class_list":["post-943651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fox-sports","tag-mlb","tag-nbc-sports-group","tag-sports","tag-tnt-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}