{"id":830517,"date":"2026-10-16T06:09:36","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/830517\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T06:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:09:36","slug":"mlbs-2026-world-series-ratings-can-thrive-with-small-market-teams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/830517\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB’s 2026 World Series Ratings Can Thrive With Small-Market Teams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the Milwaukee Brewers<\/a> finished their NLCS sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> on Thursday night, MLB<\/a> commissioner Rob Manfred may have found himself scrambling for the Advil\u00ae. The Brew Crew\u2019s 6-4 series clincher in Game 4 effectively kicked the legs out from under Manfred\u2019s thesis that MLB requires a salary cap<\/a>, as one of the league\u2019s most spendthrift clubs has been extinguished by a small-market franchise with a relatively frugal $146.2 million payroll, per Spotrac data.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust as the purchase of a 300-count bottle of ibuprofen implies a decidedly ambiguous outlook on life\u2014on the one hand, the buyer anticipates a future in which he or she is plagued by headaches; on the other, the active ingredient in Advil\u00ae represents deliverance from said pain\u2014so too would the 2026 World Series<\/a> seem to portend a mixed bag of payoffs. Milwaukee will face either the skinflints in Tampa ($95.6 million) or Cleveland ($74.5 million) in the Fall Classic.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnless you\u2019re a Dodgers fan, the impending battle between two lean\/mean operations repping middle-tier media markets is the best thing to happen to baseball since the invention of the athletic cup. And as much as the naysayers will insist that Fox is about to take one on the chin, there is evidence to suggest that a World Series free of New York and L.A. may draw a big TV crowd, provided the season closes out with to a six- or seven-game coda.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile there\u2019s not a ton of data to support the notion that the Brewers can boost the Nielsen ratings in October, the inherent potential of a slump-busting matchup is hard to overstate. Milwaukee\u2019s been thirsting for a title since its launch 57 years ago, and the club\u2019s lone World Series appearance to date was a [wall]banger. In 1982, Harvey Kuenn\u2019s squad went the distance with Whitey Herzog\u2019s St. Louis Cardinals, and that rollercoaster still stands as the fifth most-watched MLB title tilt on the books.<\/p>\n

\n\tNBC averaged 38.07 million viewers over the course of those seven broadcasts, with the deciding game scaring up just shy of 50 million viewers. Since then, Milwaukee has had to watch the action from the bleachers, but if Fox\u2019s deliveries for Game 1 of this year\u2019s NLCS are any indication, Americans would seem to have a hankering for these underdogs. Per Nielsen, the Brewers\u2019 2-1 victory on Oct. 11 averaged 10.72 million viewers, marking the biggest audience for an NLCS opener in 21 years.<\/p>\n

\n\tFans demonstrably enjoy watching long-suffering teams finally put their demons to rest, as was made evident by the heroically entertaining 2016 World Series. On one side of the diamond there stood the cursed Chicago Cubs, who were desperate to get a 108-year-old monkey off their backs. Opposite the Cubbies were a Cleveland squad that had waited 67 seasons to hoist the hardware, having last quaffed the victory beers in 1948. (The Indians\u2019 4-2 win over the Boston Braves was only the second televised World Series in history; such was the state of sports media rights in that long-ago era that the games were carried by each of the four extant broadcasters. One of them was the DuMont Television Network, which: go ask your great-grandpa.)<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything about that 2016 series was electrifying, so it seemed fitting that the battle would be decided in bonus cantos. Chicago\u2019s 8-7 extra-inning victory averaged 40.05 million viewers, giving Fox bragging rights to the most-watched MLB game in 25 years. All told, the Cubs-Indians slate averaged 22.85 million viewers, making it the most-eyeballed World Series since the Boston Red Sox expunged their own longstanding \u201ccurse\u201d in 2004. If nothing else, there is ample data to suggest that people really enjoy watching baseball teams pull a Father Karras.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the power of redemption isn\u2019t enough to compel you into believing that curse-busting equals ratings gold, a deeper dive into the archives may do the trick. In 1995, Cleveland helped wash the bad taste of the canceled \u201994 season out of millions of mouths by way of a six-game showdown with the Atlanta Braves. With an average TV turnout of 28.97 million viewers in alternating broadcasts on ABC and NBC, the series out-delivered the following year\u2019s Braves-Yankees duel by some 3.75 million fans per night.<\/p>\n

\n\tCleveland a bigger draw than New York? Will wonders never cease?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Tampa\u2019s a much larger market\u2014its 2.28 million TV homes make it the 11th largest DMA in the U.S., whereas Cleveland-Akron (1.56 million) is ranked 20th\u2014the extent of the Guardians\u2019 drought very likely gives them the edge over the Rays in terms of potential audience deliveries. Tampa doesn\u2019t have a robust national following, and its two appearances coincide with some of the least-watched World Series on the books.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, one of the Rays\u2019 Fall Classics is practically staggering under the weight of an asterisk. Following the COVID-blighted 2020 campaign, in which the regular season was whittled down to a rudimentary 60-game slate, the Rays\u2019 loss to the Dodgers managed just 9.82 million viewers, making it MLB\u2019s second least-viewed title series on record. Only the 2023 Rangers-Diamondbacks slog<\/a> was the subject of less overall curiosity, and that five-game set was almost wholly devoid of suspense.<\/p>\n

\n\tTampa\u2019s first shot at the crown was also a bit of a bust, as that five-game loss to the Phillies managed well under 14 million viewers per game. Clearly, advertisers would be better served by a Brewers-Guardians pairing, but as always, Fox is mostly rooting for a full seven-frame set.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe relative tininess of the Milwaukee market\u2014956,350 TV households lie within the bounds of the Cream City DMA, which works out to 0.75% of the total U.S. base\u2014may be largely offset by fans\u2019 desire to see a lifelong drought come to an end. So as much as Fox will be denied another crack at a Yankees-Dodgers<\/a> juggernaut, the impending meeting of two small-fry clubs should still attract a healthy crowd \u2026 provided the AL contender manages to wrest the brooms out of the Brewers\u2019 mitts. Milwaukee has the chance to serve up one of the great American redemption arcs, and while it\u2019s sad that Bob Uecker won\u2019t be on hand to cheer on his Brewers, a whole lot of us will be hollering in front of our screens in the weeks to come.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Brewers-Guardians or Brewers-Rays finale would seem to undermine MLB\u2019s ambitions to force a salary cap down the players\u2019 throats, but even Rob Manfred may have a hard time wiping the grin off his mug if a clash between two small-market penny-pinchers goes a full seven games. If the prospect doesn\u2019t spark joy in the commish, there may be something inside his head that even Advil\u00ae can\u2019t fix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Milwaukee Brewers finished their NLCS sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday night, MLB commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":830518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,51,57,59,4,13435,1039],"class_list":["post-830517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-mlb","tag-tv-ratings","tag-world-series"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117449101450280800","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=830517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/830518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=830517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=830517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=830517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}