Major League Baseball has a problem. For once, it isn’t the pitch clock, the length of games, or starting extra innings with a runner already on second base. It’s the NFL. That 800-pound gorilla not only owns the room but apparently owns every television in it.
On Monday night, the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays were playing Game 3 of the World Series. Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles were playing a regular-season football game. Not the playoffs. Not the Super Bowl. Just another Monday night in October. Football attracted roughly 18.8 million viewers, while baseball drew about 8.3 million. Somewhere, Rob Manfred probably wondered whether the World Series could be moved to Tuesday morning.
Before we declare baseball dead and start measuring its coffin, those numbers deserve a closer look. The World Series was drawing a respectable audience before the NFL showed up and started devouring everything in sight.
Game 1 between Milwaukee and Tampa Bay averaged 12.26 million viewers. Game 2 drew 10.85 million. That’s not exactly a national shrug for a matchup featuring two teams from smaller television markets that rarely command the national spotlight. The opening games also trailed last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays audiences by only a modest margin, despite the absence of Shohei Ohtani, baseball’s biggest television draw.
You could hear television executives reaching for the antacids when this matchup was set. No Yankees, Dodgers, or Ohtani. Just two dominant baseball teams from markets that don’t usually make advertisers start throwing confetti.
Then Monday happened. Milwaukee routed Tampa Bay 10-1 while Cowboys-Eagles dominated the television landscape. Was America rejecting small-market baseball, or was a lopsided game getting steamrolled by the NFL?
Probably some of both. Ratings tell us how many people watched, not why everyone else stayed away.
Baseball Has Momentum
The next night offered a useful clue. Tampa Bay’s dramatic 12-inning Game 4 victory drew a preliminary audience of around 13.5 million. Suddenly, millions of people who supposedly didn’t care about the Brewers and Rays found their remote controls again.
Milwaukee ultimately won its first World Series championship ever in five games. That’s exactly the kind of story sports are supposed to celebrate. A smaller-market organization building a winner, beating the mighty Dodgers along the way. Thus proving that a championship doesn’t have to belong to whoever writes the biggest checks.
Would Yankees-Dodgers have attracted more casual viewers? Quite possibly.
The 2023 Rangers-Diamondbacks World Series averaged a record-low 9.11 million viewers, proving that some matchups struggle to break through nationally. This year’s numbers also show that smaller markets don’t automatically spell ratings disaster.
The NFL, meanwhile, operates on a different planet. Football has figured out how to turn practically every game into a national event. Fans watch teams they don’t like, players they barely know, and games that aren’t particularly good. Put an NFL logo on the screen, add betting and fantasy football.
Twenty million viewers show up.
Baseball doesn’t have that luxury. It needs compelling games, recognizable stars and meaningful stakes to attract casual viewers. Its challenge isn’t simply convincing people to watch the World Series. It’s making them care about Milwaukee or Tampa Bay before October. So when those teams don’t arrive on the national stage looking like strangers.
A Looming Labor Issue
Just as baseball appears to be making progress, here comes another potential labor stoppage.
The collective bargaining agreement expires December 1. Owners and players face difficult negotiations, with the possibility of a salary cap among the major flashpoints. A lockout is possible. Although a winter shutdown wouldn’t automatically mean losing regular-season games.
That’s an important distinction, but it’s still a gamble baseball doesn’t need.
Remember 1994? A players’ strike wiped out the World Series and left fans furious. Baseball recovered, but it took time. The steroid era and an emergence of major stars with a legendary home run chase eventually helped rebuild enthusiasm. The sport shouldn’t assume today’s audience would be equally patient.
The competition is relentless now. There’s the NFL, NBA, and college football. In addition, an endless menu of streaming entertainment. If baseball misses games, fans won’t sit in front of a blank screen waiting for billionaires and millionaires to agree on how to divide the money.
They’ll watch something else. Some might not come back.
That makes the timing so maddening. Baseball has improved its pace with the pitch clock. Young stars are emerging, and postseason audiences have offered encouraging signs. Milwaukee just delivered the kind of championship story that reminds us why sports matter. Instead of building on that momentum, the people running the sport could spend the winter arguing over the financial rules governing the next agreement.
Baseball isn’t going to beat the NFL in television ratings. It doesn’t have to. There’s room for more than one successful sport. The Brewers and Rays showed that a World Series doesn’t need New York or Los Angeles to find an audience.
But baseball can’t afford to become its own worst enemy. It can’t control whether Cowboys-Eagles steals viewers on Monday night. It can’t control which teams reach the World Series.
However, it can control whether there are baseball games to watch in 2027. If owners and players can’t figure that out, they won’t have to worry about the NFL stealing their audience. They’ll have handed it over themselves.
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