The World Series got off to a superb start for Fox on Friday as the sport that resulted in a dramatic walk-off 6-3 win for the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Recent York Yankees delivered the biggest Game 1 audience for the autumn classic since 2017.
Fox Sports reported that a median of 15.2 million viewers tuned in to see the Dodgers defeat the Yankees at home within the tenth inning. Dodgers slugger Freddie Freeman hit a picture-perfect walk-off home run with bases loaded. Viewership peaked at 17.8 million at 11:30 p.m. ET through the ultimate half-hour of the sport, per Fox.
The sport aired across Fox Sports’ linear and digital platforms, in addition to cabler Fox Deportes and Spanish-language giant Univision, which partnered with Fox for the World Series.
The rarity of a Yankees-Dodgers World Series has boosted interset on this 12 months’s MLB championship round. Viewership was up 62% from 2023’s Game 1 between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. That game didn’t crack 10 million viewers (9.3 million viewers).
In 2017, the kick off to the Houston Astros-Dodgers series, which might grow to be a scandalous black-eye for the Astros following a sign-stealing and cheating scandal, brought in 15.3 million viewers, per Fox.
Within the battle of West Coast-East Coast fandoms, Los Angeles won Friday by a large margin. The sport averaged a 19.1 household rating and 58 share within the L.A. market. In Recent York, the nation’s largest TV market, the autumn classic grabbed a 13.2/37 in the identical measures — meaning that a far greater proportion of L.A. TV viewers were tuned in to the sport live than were Yankees fans in Recent York.
Fox noted that Friday’s game marked its highest-rated telecast on a Friday night because it carried Game 3 of the 2017 Astros-Dodgers World Series.
(Pictured: Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman after hitting the game-winning home run)
