Can the World Series beat the NFL for one night? How Games 1 and 2 could become a TV rarity

We have something coming Monday that is very interesting, at least for sports media nerds like me. The New York Giants face the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football. There is one team that always gets a good draw nationally (Pittsburgh) and another that gets a good draw in the competition (Giants).

Monday also sees Game 3 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of the most anticipated World Series in years. As The athleteJayson Stark wrote: “It’s star power. It's history. And it will reverberate not just from the East Coast to the West Coast, but across the Pacific.” According to Nielsen, it is also the No. 1 and No. 2 television market in the United States, the Yankees are traditionally the sport's biggest television attraction and Fox has a unique marketing opportunity to promote both likely MVPs – New York's Aaron Judge and LA's Shohei Ohtani.

So on Monday night in the Bronx, the World Series has a rare chance to lead the National Football League in single-night attendance — especially if Games 1 and 2 this weekend help the cause.

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There was a time when the World Series destroyed the NFL in the ratings. Seriously, this happened. In fact, often.

For example: In the prehistoric year of 1996, the Yankees and Atlanta Braves played in the World Series. Game 1 was washed out by rain on Saturday, so the series opened on Sunday, October 20. It was the first World Series broadcast for the still low-profile Fox Network, which agreed to a five-year deal with MLB in November 1995 that included rights to broadcast the World Series in 1996, 1998 and 2000.

Atlanta's 12-1 thrashing of New York still averaged 23.69 million viewers. Game 2, a 4-0 Atlanta win scheduled back-to-back with a “Monday Night Football” game on ABC between the then-Oakland Raiders and the then-San Diego Chargers, averaged 23.7 million viewers. The six-game series would ultimately average 25.2 million viewers.

But here's the interesting thing: The 14.0 rating for World Series Game 2 beat “Monday Night Football,” which gave it a 12.0 rating. (Each rating point represented 970,000 households at the time.) The New York Times reported that “Game 2 competed with 'Monday Night Football' for sports viewers for just over an hour. From 9:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., the series scored a 15.7 rating, compared to 10.1 for the football game; From 9:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., the series received a 16.2 rating, compared to a 10.7 for ABC. It wasn't until after 10 p.m. that the football game surpassed Game 2. Fox's game ended at 10:11 p.m.

In short, the World Series destroyed the NFL.

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Judge, Ohtani and a dream World Series matchup: Could this be MLB's Magic and Bird?

Fast forward to today. The NFL has become the most successful viewing content in the United States, with companies paying billions for media rights. Regular season games in 2024 averaged between 17 and 18 million viewers, with games in prominent TV windows naturally achieving more. Last year's AFC and NFC championship games averaged 56.1 million viewers and the Super Bowl drew 123.7 million viewers.

The World Series? None of the last four averaged more than 12 million viewers, and last year they averaged 9.1 million viewers. Only one World Series has averaged more than 20 million viewers since 2005 – the 2016 World Series, where the Chicago Cubs finally broke their franchise title drought. This series averaged 22.8 million viewers, including 40 million viewers who watched Game 7.

MLB decided to play the NFL on Sundays a few years ago. According to Sports Media Watch: The 2022 World Series marked the first time since 1990 that a World Series game was not played on a Sunday. This will also be the case this year (as long as it doesn't rain).

But Monday night it will face an NFL game that airs on ABC, ESPN and ESPN+, so the ABC/ESPN simulcast will draw additional viewers for the football. There is also a ManningCast on ESPN2. Last year's “Monday Night Football” broadcast averaged 17.4 million viewers.

But if things go well, the World Series has a chance to put MNF on top.

What would it mean if something broke? It would likely involve a split of the opening games, something dramatic happening in one or each of those games to grab the attention of some casual fans, and solidly earned media leading up to it.

The last time the Yankees played in the World Series – in 2009 against the Philadelphia Phillies – the series averaged 19.33 million viewers. During that series, Fox's Game 5 coverage outperformed ESPN's live broadcast “Monday Night Football” by 38 percent (17.1 million to 12.4 million).

Also, check out this table, courtesy of Sports Business Journal Deputy Editor Austin Karp:

If you were designing a World Series to maximize viewership in a large market, this would be the right choice. I also think having two New York-based teams playing on the same night will favor baseball in the New York media market since the Yankees are playing for a championship.

“Well, not so fast,” says Bob Thompson, a former Fox Sports executive who now works as a content consultant.

“Basically, the World Series needs to attract 20 million viewers to compete with the ABC/ESPN/ManningCast numbers,” Thompson said. “When you take all of those (factors) into account, aside from it being just Game 3, I still think the NFL will win the night. If this were a Game 7, I would go all-in with MLB to win the night. But it will still be a great series for MLB.”

I reached out to two of the nation's leading sports viewing experts – Sports Media Watch founder Jon Lewis and SBJ's Karp.

“I think both games will weaken each other,” Lewis said. “Neither of them will do as well as they would have done unopposed. I would imagine the World Series game brought in 15.3 million and Monday Night Football brought in 13.9 million.”

“I think for (MLB) to win, it has to be 1-1 in the World Series on Monday night, and I think you have to have a lopsided score between the Steelers and Giants at halftime,” Karp said.

Thompson is working on the 20 million mark; I think the NFL game ends up being a little worse. But will it be enough for baseball to defeat the mighty NFL for one night? We'll find out next week when the viewing figures are available.

Go deeper

How do the Yankees and Dodgers fare? A World Series story from the tape

(Top photo of Aaron Judge hitting a home run during a June game against the Dodgers: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)