Major League Baseball is enjoying a surge of success in 2025 heading into the World Series. Commissioner Rob Manfred must be pleased to see all three league television partners showing year-over-year increases in viewership for the 2025 regular season. Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN was up 21 percent, the best figures since 2012. TBS saw a 29 percent increase this season, as did FOX Sports, which experienced a nine percent increase year-over-year.
MLB now enters the championship portion of the postseason with three unlikely competitors and one proven commodity. The Seattle Mariners, Milwaukee Brewers, and Toronto Blue Jays have a combined total of just two World Series championships. The Los Angeles Dodgers alone quadruple that number.
Earlier this year, the NBA Finals between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder sparked debate over low ratings. Excluding a game seven, the series produced the lowest viewership (outside of COVID-era numbers) in many years. Could baseball face the same challenge with smaller markets and unfamiliar teams in the spotlight?
Make no mistake: people are watching more baseball in 2025 than last year. MLB also achieved its first three-year run of growth at the turnstiles, with attendance rising slightly for a third consecutive season. The sport is recapturing audiences both in person and at home at levels unseen in years.
Oh The Possibilities
But with the World Series less than a week away, the league faces a familiar challenge. The Dodgers are a juggernaut, drawing attention worldwide and bringing viewers to every nationally televised game. The Brewers, Blue Jays, and Mariners, by contrast, lack comparable national draw.
Milwaukee appeared on national television just ten times this season, with no Sunday Night Baseball coverage. Despite finishing with the best record in baseball at 97-65, the Brewers received minimal attention from a national audience.
Toronto tells a similar story. The Blue Jays appeared on national U.S. television only three times. They finished tied with the New York Yankees for the American League East title but were televised 14 fewer times than New York.
Seattle fared slightly better, with 13 national appearances. Being a West Coast team helps fill late-night slots for networks, and the Mariners led the AL West in national coverage.
Baseball’s crown jewel is the Los Angeles Dodgers. With 21 appearances on national television this season and the defending MVP, Shohei Ohtani, they are baseball’s biggest draw. Without question, the defending champions are one of the largest and most popular brands in the sport.
Ideally on paper, if Commissioner Rob Manfred had his way. Anything involving the Los Angeles Dodgers playing in the World Series would be preferred from a viewership standpoint. An average of 15.8 million people in the United States viewed last year’s World Series, marking a 67 percent increase from the 2023 World Series between the D-backs and Rangers.
Without the Dodgers, how much could viewership drop? Could a Milwaukee-Seattle or Milwaukee-Toronto matchup lead to a sharp decline? And how steep would the drop be if the series included Canada’s lone team?
Right Place, Right Time For MLB
If history has shown anything, the new Nielsen “big data + panel” measuring system could factor into the narrative surrounding baseball and a potential viewership drop with no Dodgers representation in the World Series. The measurement company introduced the new metric on September 1 for live programming, just in time for the start of the college and pro football seasons.
Viewership since its implementation has seen massive gains year-over-year for nearly every NFL and college football product. The same can be said for opening night of the NHL season and the viewership growth for the MLB postseason so far.
To use a radio term, it’s been a shot to television ratings measurement like “Voltair” was to radio brands.
Live programming for sports has benefited from the new measurement system, whereas other programming has struggled to maintain viewership figures. This works to the advantage of countering narratives about small-market teams or lesser-known national commodities playing for the sport’s largest prize.
At least, for now.
The World Series benefited last year from the two largest markets and two most popular brands in the sport playing one another for the game’s ultimate prize. This year will be very different, with three teams of lesser national notoriety as the final four. However, the biggest driver of viewership for the Series itself won’t be anything on the field or in the broadcast booth.
Major League Baseball is the beneficiary of right place, right time. Regardless of which two teams play in the World Series, there will be some decline in viewership but nothing that should worry baseball fans or sports media, unlike what happened this spring with the NBA Finals. Will World Series ratings dominate sports radio? Should columnists and podcasters question the measurement methodology?
Baseball may no longer be the American pastime it once was, but the numbers suggest the sport is thriving in 2025. When viewership is tallied for this less star-studded Fall Classic, remember this: the counting has changed, and the audience is still there.
The answer, as always, is hardly inside baseball.
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John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
