Even in a pandemic, the early television ratings for this year’s World Series are absolutely terrible.
Game 1 of the Fall Classic between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays drew a record-low average of 9.2 million viewers on Fox, according to Richard Deitsch of The Athletic.
How bad is that? It represents the smallest audience for a World Series game since sports broadcasts began measuring ratings.
The previous record for the lowest viewership of a World Series contest was Game 3 of the 2008 Fall Classic, which also happened to include the Rays.
Overall, the ratings were down 25 percent from last year’s Game 1 between the Nationals and Astros.
The only positive is here is that the 9.2 million viewers Tuesday gave MLB the third-largest audience for a non-NFL sporting event since the pandemic began in March.
