The following article ” Dodgers-Yankees finale tops 18 million mark ” originally appeared on Sports Media Watch .
The Dodgers-Yankees World Series finished, as expected, on a high note.
Wednesday’s Dodgers-Yankees World Series Game 5 averaged a 9.0 rating and 18.15 million viewers on FOX (18.6M including Fox Deportes and streaming), marking the largest World Series audience since Game 7 of the 2019 series and the top Game 5 audience since Dodgers-Astros in 2017 (18.94M). Keep in mind the 2018 Red Sox-Dodgers Game 5 (17.63M) would have almost certainly finished with a larger audience had out-of-home viewing been tracked in Nielsen estimates at that time.
The Dodgers’ comeback win, which peaked with 21.27 million in the 11:15 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 50% and 58% respectively from last year’s Rangers-Diamondbacks clincher (6.0, 11.48M).
On a Nielsen-only basis, Game 5 of the Fall Classic outdrew every NBA and men’s college basketball game since 2019. Excluding football and the Olympics, it ranks second among sportscasts this year behind the NCAA women’s basketball national championship.