World Series Game 2 posts record-low viewership: Whats impacting the numbers?
After staggeringly low viewership in Game 1 of the 2023 World Series, Game 2 between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers became the least-watched Fall Classic game on record. Here’s what you need to know:
- The game — which the Diamondbacks won 9-1 behind pitcher Merrill Kelly’s dominance — averaged 8.15 million viewers on Fox and an additional 200,000 on Fox Deportes on Saturday night.
- Game 2’s ratings were even lower than Game 1’s, which was the least-watched World Series Game 1 on record. Game 1 averaged 9.172 million viewers on Fox and an additional 182,000 on Fox Deportes on Friday night.
- The Rangers lead the series 2-1 as the Diamondbacks host Texas in Game 4 on Tuesday.
Why so low?
This series was always going to be viewership challenged — as anyone who studies or writes about sports viewership would have told you prior to the first pitch. The question was how low would the numbers be. These numbers are low. You can’t spin them. Because fans too often personalize this stuff, it’s important to note this isn’t an attack on either team. It’s actually a fascinating baseball matchup. But the Diamondbacks and Rangers are not national draws based on historic television data outside of when they are playing a team with broad appeal or a series going long (which is what Fox has to really hope for with this series).
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Fox is going to point to Game 1 winning primetime among all Friday programs, but this is always true and they pay a lot for it to be true. For context, as Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal pointed out, the viewership was slightly below Colorado-Colorado State football on ESPN (9.3 million viewers) and on par with the Los Angeles Rams-Cincinnati Bengals “Monday Night Football” game last month (9 million).
Where this stuff really becomes eye-opening is when you compare the 2023 Game 1 viewership to recent Game 1 history not involving big viewership teams such as the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, etc. Take Game 1 of the 2011 World Series between the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals. That game drew 16.5 million viewers. If you go back nine years earlier, Game 1 between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Angels drew 19.26 million viewers. Again, if you are Fox and MLB, you are really hoping for series length here. — Richard Deitsch, sports media senior writer
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(Photo: Jerome Miron / USA Today)
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