The final game of Major League Baseball’s (MLB) 2024 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees drew expectedly high viewership.
Game five of the best-of-seven North American series, which saw the Dodgers come from behind to win 7-6 against the Yankees and thereby clinch the World Series 4-1, drew an average of 18.15 million viewers on the Fox network, with viewership peaking at 21.27 million.
18.15 million represents the highest average viewership for a World Series fixture since game seven of the 2019 series between the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros, which averaged 23.22 million.
Across the full five games, this year's series averaged 15.2 million viewers on Fox, rising to 15.81 million when factoring in Spanish-language broadcasts Fox Deportes and game 1 on free-to-air network Univision.
The deal between Fox and the MLB, through which that broadcaster holds exclusive World Series rights, covers the 2022-28 cycle and has been reported as worth $5 billion overall.
The series-wide average figure made it the highest-averaging World Series since the Dodgers faced the Astros in 2017 (18.9 million), although the series’ before 2019 did not measure out-of-home viewership, meaning the real figure is likely even higher.
The 2024 figure, while high compared to the other post-Covid World Series’, is still the least-watched edition to ever involve the New York Yankees, one of the sport’s great historic franchises and the most successful MLB team ever.
This more than anything indicates the decline in the TV market since the Yankees last made the World Series (2009), with cord-cutting by US consumers due to cost seeing OTT subscriptions rise while traditional pay-TV services flounder.
Despite this, promising numbers remain and lend hope to the future, after the opening two World Series games registered a 93% increase in viewership within the 18-34 year-old audience group in the US compared to last year’s edition, the largest increase of any demographic group.
The series also performed well in Japan, one of baseball’s biggest international markets, where thanks to the exploits of Japanese Dodgers stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, game 2 of the series was Japan’s most-watched postseason MLB game, and second most-watched MLB game in general, ever.
Additionally, MLB’s social media platforms have registered the most views and engagements in World Series history.
By comparison the 2023 MLB World Series was the least-watched edition since TV viewership records began.
The series, which saw the Texas Rangers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks four games to one, averaged just 9.11 million viewers with a 4.7 rating.
Of the series’ five games, only the title-clinching game five avoided setting a record low for equivalent World Series games, drawing 11.45 million viewers.
