MLB

The World Series is upon us, and this one should be a delight: The team with the best record in the National League, the Milwaukee Brewers, against the team with the best record in the American League, the Tampa Bay Rays.

The players are about to take baseball’s grandest stage. Yet this has somehow become a strange national obsession: not how Jacob Misiorowski or Junior Caminero might shine in the series, but how many people might watch it.

Should you care? Not really. Have you ever thought about watching a World Series game and thought, “Hmmm, let me consider what the ratings might be before I decide to tune in?”

Major League Baseball cares, of course, because its owners count on billions of dollars from the sale of television rights, and those rights are worth more money when more people watch the games. And, since the fog of a collective bargaining war has enveloped the sport, the ratings make for an intriguing subplot in the World Series.

This World Series is what owners say they want: less of, say, the Dodgers and the New York Yankees, more of teams from smaller markets that seldom advance through the playoffs, if they even get there. Neither the Brewers nor the Rays have won a World Series.

Yet the ratings for the Dodgers-Yankees World Series in 2024 almost doubled those for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers in 2023, and this year’s ratings should be much closer to 2023 than 2024.

So, in a sport that already generates the majority of its broadcast revenue in national rather than local packages, amid the collapse of regional sports networks, are the owners taking a risk of making less money on the World Series?

Fox currently airs the World Series as the jewel of a seven-year, $5.1-billion deal that expires in 2028.

Ed Desser, a Santa Monica-based consultant who launched NBA TV and helped negotiate the Dodgers’ record SportsNet LA deal, said the value of a World Series featuring teams such as the Dodgers and Yankees goes beyond the large audiences they command because they play in large markets.

“It’s commonplace for people to hate the Dodgers, hate the Yankees — and, to some extent, that’s good for business, because it’s another rooting interest. Anything that gets people to focus their attention is good,” Desser said. “It’s easy to hate a team that’s in a glamorous place and spends more than almost anybody.

“I’m not sure that anybody has an ax to grind against the Rays or the Brewers. Sports is about passion.”

That said, neither Desser nor Bob Thompson, the former president of Fox Sports Networks, believes MLB is setting itself up for a big fall in revenue from the Fall Classic.

For Fox — and whatever other bidders might emerge come 2028 — ratings would be important, but not as much as you might think.

“Does expected audience matter? Of course,” Desser said. “They’re in the media business, and the way you monetize is by selling subscriptions to your channel and selling advertising.

“But, typically, you’re taking a much longer viewpoint. You’re making a deal that might be five, eight, 12 years. When you do that, you have an expectation that some teams get better, some teams get worse, sometimes you get a large market, sometimes you get a small market. It kind of evens out.”

This is the fifth season of the current Fox contract. The 10 World Series berths have been spread among nine teams, with the Dodgers appearing twice.

To a broadcast outlet, Thompson said, financial success in the World Series is not just about ratings.

“It’s about how good the matchup is and how long the matchup goes. The bulk of the advertising is sold up front (before we know the teams),” Thompson said. “Ratings for the series aren’t going to be a huge deal, unless you’re selling time in, say, Game 6 and Game 7, where you can really be jacking your rates.”

Last year’s Dodgers-Blue Jays World Series extended to seven games, attracting viewers amid a dramatic finish and ultimately getting a higher rating than the 2024 Dodgers-Yankees series, even though Canadian viewers weren’t included in that Nielsen count. The Dodgers-Yankees series lasted five games, and the Dodgers beat up on the Yankees when the Yankees weren’t beating themselves.

Even if the World Series itself might be worth less with more lower-profile teams competing, Thompson said MLB could include it as part of a larger package, or dangle it as an incentive for streaming outlets or other new bidders.

He also noted that the latest MLB collective bargaining proposal calls for fewer regular-season games and more postseason games.

“Playoffs are going to get you a premium over regular-season games,” Thompson said.

And, to the extent that postseason ratings might be in decline, ratings for everything — sporting events, awards shows, news shows, dramas, comedies, you name it — are in decline. Only the NFL is immune to lower ratings.

“Big events matter more than they used to, even with smaller audiences,” Desser said. “The World Series is still a big event, and there is a premium for that.”

The three most-watched shows on broadcast television in the week of Oct. 5-11, according to Nielsen: Sunday Night Football (Atlanta Falcons vs. Baltimore Ravens) with 17 million viewers; SEC Football (Alabama vs. Georgia) with 12 million viewers; NLCS Game 1 (Dodgers vs. Brewers) with 11 million viewers.

The top entertainment show that week: Tracker (CBS), with 7.4 million viewers.

The owners will make their money on the World Series, one way or another.

“Even at a lower expectation for audience, there is still going to be that value,” Desser said. “It’s one of the biggest things happening in October.”

Let’s get the rose-colored story line out of the way, right away.

The postseason starts Tuesday, and it could be the last we see of Major League Baseball for a long, long time. The owners expect to lock out the players when the collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, and the owners have made their pitch loud and clear: No new agreement without a salary cap, for they believe there can be no true competitive balance without one.

You’ll hear a lot about how the way this postseason sets up, or how it plays out, could impact the bargaining.

Don’t believe a word of it. Nothing that happens this October will be relevant to the new labor agreement.

Come on. The team with the lowest payroll — the Cleveland Guardians — won their division. So competitive balance can’t be completely out of whack, can it?

Cleveland hasn’t won the World Series since 1948. The opponent was the Boston Braves, who subsequently moved to Milwaukee and then Atlanta.

What about the team with the best record in the American League: the Tampa Bay Rays, who beat up on big-market bullies in the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox?

The Rays never have won the World Series.

Well, what about the Milwaukee Brewers? For the second consecutive season, the team in baseball’s smallest market posted baseball’s best record.

The Brewers got swept in last year’s National League Championship Series. They never have won the World Series.

But aren’t the Brewers the best example of a team playing beyond its payroll instead of using it as an excuse?

They got smoked last October by the Dodgers, who won the World Series and then signed Edwin Díaz and Kyle Tucker and traded for Tarik Skubal.

Isn’t that what got everyone agitated? Doesn’t everyone outside L.A. know the Dodgers have destroyed competitive balance, and the owners are trying to fix it?

The owners were ready to fight for more than a year before the Dodgers helped themselves to Díaz, Tucker and Skubal. For years, the commissioner’s office touted baseball’s competitive balance, citing in part how the league championship series and World Series matchups changed almost every year.

After the Dodgers won in 2024, the commissioner’s office redefined competitive balance as how often a small-market team won the World Series, last accomplished by the 2015 Kansas City Royals. The seeds for this winter’s labor war had been planted.

If the Dodgers flop this October, the owners are not going to suddenly back off a salary cap. If, say, the Brewers or Rays win, the owners will say that’s the exception that proves the rule.

There are ways for owners to direct more revenue to small-market teams without the salary cap the players insist they will not accept, and without limiting the definition of success to winning the World Series, which risks devaluing the product among 29 fan bases every year. Whether the owners wish to consider them without the cost certainty that comes with a salary cap will be the story line of the cold winter ahead.

The Dodgers are scheduled to open next season on March 25. Neither owners nor players would have lost any significant revenue by then — ticket sales and broadcasting rights for owners, salaries for players — so a new agreement by then is uncertain at best.

So enjoy the postseason.

So, at least for now, isn’t the postseason tilted toward the Dodgers and Yankees?

Those screams you hear are coming from New York, where Yankees fans are annoyed that their team finished with the second-best record in the AL and still could be eliminated in two or three days. The Yankees finished behind the Rays and received a wild card.

The Yankees lost 13 fewer games than the AL West champion Houston Astros and 10 fewer games than the AL Central champion Guardians, both seeded ahead of them. The Astros are a .500 team, the worst record a division champion has taken into the postseason. The Guardians get a bye, just like the Dodgers.

The Yankees drew the Red Sox, which means painful amounts of national commentary will focus on (1) how the system victimized the Yankees and the Red Sox; and (2) baseball’s most hyped rivalry.

Until baseball realigns its divisions or seeds its playoffs by wins, regardless of division, the Yankees should simply do what Aaron Judge said about how they should respond to criticism of their fundamentally frightening 2024 World Series: “Play better.” And baseball’s best rivalry will be on October display only if the Dodgers and San Diego Padres meet in the NL Championship Series.

Still laughing, though, at sanctimonious Yankees fans believing baseball is somehow unfair to the poor, gutty Yankees.

Can anyone save baseball in 2027?

We should try Pope Leo. He’s a long-suffering Chicago White Sox fan. In his first full year as pope — and after three consecutive 100-loss seasons — the White Sox made the playoffs.

Some fans call it a miracle, a reporter told the pope. Did the pope have anything to do with the turnaround?

He smiled.

“No comment,” he said, then paused.

“Great things happen in Chicago,” he said.

The Cubs made the postseason too. The Cubs and White Sox have shared Chicago since 1901. This is the fourth time both have qualified for postseason play. Deep dish pizza for all, but a World Series in Chicago this fall might truly require divine intervention.