Baseball Is Back: World Series Obliterates NBA, Challenges NFL

The 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays is the culmination of years of growth for Major League Baseball. 

Ratings for Saturday night's Game 7, despite competing with several compelling college football games, were massive. Roughly 26 million viewers tuned in to watch the Dodgers win their second consecutive championship. Those numbers easily outpaced comparable NBA Finals Game 7 ratings, and overall viewership across the series obliterated NBA viewership.

RELATED: World Series Crushes NBA Finals In The Ratings -- Again

But even that undersells just how big Game 7 was for the league and for the future of baseball. 

New ratings were released on Wednesday morning covering viewers in the US, Canada and Japan, and they are massive. 51 million viewers tuned in to watch Game 7, the most watched baseball game in 34 years. 

Baseball is officially back. 

Nov 1, 2025; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; The Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate on the podium after defeating the Toronto Blue Jays in game seven of the 2025 MLB World Series at Rogers Centre. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Sousa-Imagn Images

Baseball Exploding In Popularity Despite Huge Disadvantages

This massive growth in viewership is a clear sign that the sport is in fantastic shape thanks to star power and pace of play. Despite what opposing fans and many media figures have claimed, the Dodgers dominance and big name roster has paid massive dividends for the sport at large.

Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki have helped grow baseball in Japan. The Dodgers have one of the country's largest fanbases. And impartial viewers love a villain. Derek Jeter's Yankees teams in the late 1990's were a dynasty, outspending and outsigning the opposition. People still watched. 

This era's Dodgers team is similar. And the Blue Jays were a compelling foil that drew huge interest in Canada. 

Beyond the specific teams involved though, it's a sign that baseball has made inroads where the NFL led. The advent of sports betting, prop bets and fantasy football, led to an explosion in popularity for professional football. The schedule too, provided inherent advantages. Instead of a nightly commitment, 162 days a year, general football fans could spend their Sunday watching games they had no rooting interest in. Or use the Red Zone broadcast to bypass the boring parts of games and uninteresting matchups. 

Over time, those structural advantages, along with the thrill of betting and fantasy football, led to people incorrectly labeling the NFL as more "exciting" than baseball. Yet NFL games feature the least action of any major sports broadcast. Try to sit down and watch a game between the Jets and Browns and it's quickly apparent how much time is spent on shots of coaches staring blankly ahead while standing on the sidelines. Or pointless crowd shots. Or watching players stand around for 30 seconds at a time after the latest two-yard dive play or incomplete pass. Betting, Red Zone, and one day per week viewing have made the NFL dominant.

That's likely never going to change. But MLB's rule changes designed to enhance in-game action and pace of play have brought fans back. Many have realized that you can, in fact, lose money by gambling on baseball too. The average baseball game is now significantly shorter than NFL games, and there's far more action. Unless you count 25 seconds of unnecessary huddling as action.

The World Series ratings and viewership exploded, even without the Yankees, baseball's biggest draw, involved. The trajectory continues to shoot upwards for MLB. Now they just have to hope owners aren't dumb enough to squander all of it with a lengthy 2026 lockout.