Yankees-Dodgers World Series has already crowned a winner
Two of the three highest-rated World Series games in history featured the New York Yankees playing the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The clinching Game 6 of the 1978 World Series, in which the Yankees defeated the Dodgers, averaged 44.279 million viewers for NBC. The clinching Game 6 of the 1981 World Series, in which the Dodgers defeated the Yankees, averaged 41.37 million viewers on ABC.
Compare those numbers to the 2023 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. Game 2 averaged a record-low 8.15 million viewers on Fox on a Saturday night. Overall, the series had the lowest average viewership since ratings were first tracked in 1963.
A Yankees-Dodgers World Series is exactly what baseball needs. Last year, the Rangers-D-Backs matchup was the least-watched World Series of all-time averaging 9.11 million viewers per game.
— Doug McKain (@DMAC_LA) October 20, 2024
A Yankees-Dodgers Fall Classic would be the most watched World Series in a long time.
The historic World Series matchup already has a big winner: MLB and Fox executives whose economic livelihood hinges on ratings in a way few fans can appreciate.
The Yankees have played in 40 World Series, winning 27 –— the most championship appearances and most victories by any team among all major North American professional sports leagues. The Dodgers have played in 21 World Series, winning seven.
Yankees-Dodgers is the most frequent World Series matchup in history. They first played each other in 1941, when the Dodgers were based in Brooklyn and the series was a crosstown affair. From 1941-81, the teams met each other 11 times for the championship, but their reigns of success have never lined up since.
"The Yankees have a really good team with a lot of good players and really good coaches," Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani told Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal through his interpreter after the game. "I'm really looking forward to playing against them."
Setting aside the historic matchup, stars like Ohtani and Mookie Betts for the Dodgers, and Aaron Judge and Juan Soto for the Yankees, will make marketing the series a walk in the park.
Ohtani and Judge are near-locks to win MVP awards in their respective leagues. Betts has won the award in the past; Soto has finished in the top 10 in MVP voting in four of his first six seasons.
7 best players in baseball this decade are all playing today.
— Chris Black (@DownToBlack) October 17, 2024
MLB's Most Productive Players
In the 2020s (WAR)
1. Shohei Ohtani 35
2. Aaron Judge 33
3. Juan Soto 27
Jose Ramirez 27
5. Freddie Freeman 26
6. Francisco Lindor 25
Mookie Betts 25 pic.twitter.com/qzhnC8tlQl
Contrast that to a year ago; World Series MVP Corey Seager is (and was) a household name, but not to the same degree. And the Rangers did not have a strong supporting cast around him in terms of name recognition. The series yielded an 11-inning classic in Game 1, but few other cliffhangers.
A Yankees-Dodgers matchup can fall short of the hype and still deliver a ratings victory in Manhattan. MLB hasn't been in that position in a while — perhaps not since 1981, the last time these two teams met for a championship.
The schedule is as follows (times to be announced):
Game 1: Friday, Dodger Stadium
Game 2: Saturday, Dodger Stadium
Game 3: Oct. 28, Yankee Stadium
Game 4: Oct. 29, Yankee Stadium
Game 5: Oct. 30, Yankee Stadium (if necessary)
Game 6: Nov. 1, Dodger Stadium (if necessary)
Game 7: Nov. 2, Dodger Stadium (if necessary)
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