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Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: “Behind the News” is the product of Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT.
The World Series remains one of America’s most anticipated sporting events. But if you’re judging its health solely by television ratings, you might think the game is in trouble.
This year’s matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays has packed stadiums and filled sports bars from coast to coast. Yet traditional TV viewership tells a sobering story: The first two games averaged 12.5 million U.S. viewers across Fox, Fox Deportes, streaming platforms and Univision — down 14% from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series, which drew 14.55 million at the same stage.[1]
But baseball is far from dying: Game 1 attracted a combined 32.6 million viewers worldwide, MLB’s largest global audience for an opener since the Cubs’ historic 2016 championship run.[2] Canadian and Japanese audiences both shattered records.[1] The sport isn’t dead — it’s just evolving in ways that traditional metrics struggle to capture.[4]
Why the numbers look different this year
Television ratings for championship sports still hinge heavily on which teams are competing. When powerhouse franchises like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs or Braves reach the World Series, casual fans nationwide tune in. The Dodgers consistently draw strong ratings, but pairing them with the Blue Jays — Canada’s only MLB team — naturally limits domestic viewership.
Toronto’s passionate fan base stretches coast-to-coast in Canada, but those viewers don’t count toward U.S. Nielsen household ratings, even though they contribute to MLB’s overall totals.[3] Last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup featured two of baseball’s biggest U.S. television markets with massive national followings, driving viewership more than 30% above the decade’s average.[1]
Matchups still matter enormously, and this year’s pairing strengthens baseball’s international brand while softening its U.S. broadcast numbers.[3]
A crowd watches sports events at the Circa sportsbook. Traditional methods of measuring TV viewership don’t take public viewing into account. Photo by: Wade Vandervort
How Americans actually watch sports now
The real story isn’t declining interest — it’s changing behavior. According to Pew Research, fewer than half of U.S. adults now maintain traditional cable or satellite subscriptions, with younger viewers overwhelmingly consuming sports through mobile devices and streaming apps.[4]
Modern fans rarely sit through entire broadcasts anymore. Instead, they check scores on MLB.com, catch highlights on Instagram or X, or stream condensed game versions after work. A substantial portion of the audience has migrated to platforms that Nielsen’s legacy measurement systems can’t fully track.[4]
Meanwhile, MLB.TV set all-time records for both subscribers and total viewing hours in 2025, suggesting engagement remains robust — just happening elsewhere.
Another overlooked factor is public viewing. Major League Baseball reports rising viewership in bars, restaurants and outdoor watch parties, especially across Canadian cities and Los Angeles.
These gatherings create communal energy, but they don’t register as household television ratings because they’re measured per TV set, not per person.[5] A packed Toronto sports bar with 200 fans cheering for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. counts as just one TV tuned in. The same applies in Los Angeles, where Dodger fans have filled patios and taverns throughout the postseason.[5]
Broader challenges
Midweek broadcasting:
Unlike football and basketball, MLB has struggled to establish a consistent national TV presence during the regular season. The NFL owns Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. The NBA claims prime midweek slots on ESPN and ABC.
Baseball remains fragmented across regional sports networks, streaming exclusives and limited national windows. Fans often need multiple subscriptions — Apple TV+, Peacock, local cable packages — to watch all their team’s games, which can discourage casual viewing.[6]
Attention span:
Major League Baseball has aggressively addressed pace-of-play concerns. The pitch clock, introduced league-wide in 2023, has cut average game times by roughly 24 minutes while increasing scoring and action.[8] Larger bases and new pick-off rules have encouraged more stolen bases and excitement.[8]
MLB’s own surveys show fans rate the product as more thrilling and accessible than five years ago.[8] Yet a fundamental cultural challenge remains: a typical baseball game still approaches three hours, competing against countless entertainment options requiring far less time commitment.
Many younger fans prefer digestible highlight clips, podcasts or TikTok-length recaps — formats rewarding immediacy over endurance.[7]
Fans watching through different platforms
While World Series ratings have dipped, baseball’s overall vitality looks better than headline numbers suggest. Regular-season attendance in 2025 rose 3% from 2024, and MLB.TV usage hit another record high.[9]
Traditional network and cable broadcasts continue declining, mirroring broader television trends.[9] Yet the league’s digital audience — particularly fans under 30 — is growing rapidly.[9] The disconnect lies in how ad revenue and cultural prestige still flow through linear TV, making these numbers symbolically important even when they tell an incomplete story.
How baseball stacks up
Baseball isn’t alone in navigating shifting media consumption:
- Super Bowl LIX drew over 120 million viewers in 2025, setting an all-time record and showcasing the NFL’s unmatched cultural dominance[10]
- The NBA Finals averaged roughly 13 million viewers, a modest increase from 2024 but still far behind football[11]
- The Stanley Cup Final attracted approximately 4.9 million viewers on average[12]
Baseball’s 12-13 million range keeps it competitive with basketball but nowhere near football’s stratosphere. Part of this gap is structural: Baseball’s seven-game format spreads audiences across multiple nights, while the Super Bowl concentrates everything into one massive spectacle.
Across all leagues, the long-term trend is unmistakable: audiences are fragmenting as fans consume highlights, real-time updates and second-screen experiences rather than watching complete games.[4][7]
Are fans really abandoning live sports?
Not exactly. Despite declining traditional TV numbers, sports remain the most resilient live television category. According to Reuters, 94 of the 100 most-watched U.S. broadcasts in 2024 were sporting events.[13]
The difference now is how people engage. Many fans follow games through group chats, live score trackers, betting apps and social media reactions. They’re still emotionally invested — just multitasking or choosing digital interaction over passive viewing.[13]
This shift doesn’t necessarily signal diminished enthusiasm for baseball. It means fandom has evolved beyond the living room, migrating into smartphones, social platforms and shared public spaces.[13]
The bottom line
The 2025 World Series illustrates baseball’s paradox: The sport remains culturally relevant and globally popular, yet traditional television ratings continue their slow decline. This isn’t necessarily a crisis — it’s a transformation.
Baseball’s challenge isn’t making the game more appealing; by most measures, it’s succeeding. The real task is adapting to a world where “watching” means something fundamentally different than it did a generation ago, and finding ways to monetize and measure engagement that happens everywhere except in front of a traditional television set.
The World Series isn’t dying. It’s just learning to thrive in a world where fans are everywhere — except where the old scorekeepers know how to look.
Sources
1. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2025/10/world-series-viewership-dodgers-blue-jays-healthy-united-states/
2. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6755062/2025/10/27/tv-ratings-blue-jays-world-series-game-1/
3. https://frontofficesports.com/world-series-games-1-2-tv-ratings-are-up-with-u-s-canada-combined/
4. https://www.mlb.com/news/2025-world-series-reaching-large-global-audience
5. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2025/10/world-series-viewership-dodgers-blue-jays-healthy-united-states/
6. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johncassillo/2025/09/18/as-fragmentation-continues-need-for-sports-streaming-bundle-grows/
7. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/28/982035026/new-study-reveals-young-sports-fans-prefer-highlights-over-real-games
8. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-07/baseball-spring-training-pitch-clock-infield-shift-major-leagues
9. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6675274/2025/09/29/mlb-2025-viewership-numbers/
10. https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/super-bowl-lix-makes-tv-history-with-over-127-million-viewers/
11. https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2025/06/nba-finals-ratings-adam-silver/
12. https://sports.yahoo.com/article/stanley-cup-final-averaged-2-171537905.html
13. https://urbanmatter.com/from-fans-to-followers-what-sports-betting-teaches-us-about-audience-engagement/
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