It takes a special set of circumstances for Major League Baseball to get better head-to-head ratings against the NFL but that's exactly what surrounded Monday night as Game 3 of the World Series went against Monday Night Football. Front Office Sports crunched the numbers and declared a rare win for baseball, the former national pastime, over the current one.
The momentum from the star-studded World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees has winnowed somewhat as Game 3 on Monday drew an average audience of 13.6 million across all Fox Sports platforms, slightly less than totals for the opening two games. But perhaps more meaningfully, Major League Baseball prevailed in its only head-to-head competition with the NFL during the World Series, as a concurrent Monday Night Football game between the Giants and Steelers drew an average of 13.4 million on ESPN and ABC.
Dodgers-Yankees is the dream scenario for Major League Baseball and the ratings have reflected it. The Giants haven't exactly set the world on fire and many of their fans are Yankees fans so there are a ton of caveats to the bottom line. Still, it's yet another positive headline for the sport that has taken centerstage this October and really delivered.
Major League Baseball has yet to release Game 3 viewership for Japan, which has been outpacing American numbers to this point. They were able to proudly tout that the World Series is reaching the 18 to 34 demographic to an astounding degree. And yes, there will always be disagreements about how much any of all these metrics matter. But baseball has needed some wins in this department—big, splashy and easy to understand wins—for some time. Touting the cumulative success of a regional sport and codifying regional ratings does not land with the same impact of the World Series. Being bigger than the NFL is nearly impossible at this point so it's worth celebrating, even if it likely won't be replicated for a while.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as World Series Game 3 Drew Higher Ratings Than 'Monday Night Football'.
