The LA Dodgers, one of Major League Baseball’s marquee teams, took home its first championship in more than 3 decades on October 27th, but that didn’t necessarily help in the ratings department. Each game in this year’s World Series was down between 21 and 33 per cent in viewership in the US compared to the 2019 series, according to data from Samba TV.

The final game, in which the Dodgers defeated the Tampa Bay Rays took home the crown for the first time since 1988, was the most-watched game, with 8.4 million US households tuning in. However, that was lower than all but one game of the 2019 series (Game 5), as the average viewership per game was down 33 per cent from what it was a year ago, according to Samba.

Low World Series ratings follow lower than expected tune-in for the out-of-season NBA finals, although MLB lost fewer fans than the NBA.

Some other highlights from Samba’s analysis:

Baseball is a bigger draw in LA: Los Angeles teams played in both the NBA Finals and the World Series, but baseball’s deciding game was more popular.  Some 21.2 per cent of Los Angeles homes tuned in for the final game of the World Series on October 27th, while 15.6 per cent of Tampa homes tuned in.

Game 6 of the NBA Finals on October 11th drew 12.9 per cent of Los Angeles homes, while 13.5 per cent of Miami homes tuned in.

Audience segments: Hispanic households over-indexed for every World Series game this year, and were the only ethnic group to do so across all six games. In fact, other ethnic groups under-indexed for nearly every game of the series.