With MLB lockout looming, World Series readies for two small-market teams

Still, this year’s World Series winner will be the first bottom-half spender since the 2015 Kansas City Royals — a rebuke of sorts to what MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred had to say about the sport this year.

“In order for this game to reach its full potential, we need to continue to address concerns that our fans have, particularly concerns that go to the core of what we’re about — that is, competitive balance,” Manfred said in July. “We need to make sure that fans in markets at the beginning of the season have a realistic belief that their team has a chance to win.”

Manfred made the comments amid an ongoing push to institute a salary cap, which MLB has been aggressively pursuing as it claims payroll is correlated to performance. (A claim that’s somewhat in dispute.)

But the players union, unsurprisingly, views the World Series matchup as another example of the sport’s working just fine.

“It’s further evidence that the league’s purported ‘competitive balance’ justification for a salary cap holds no water,” Meyer told NBC News in a statement. “But that’s never been the real reason why they want a salary cap. They want it to juice their profits and franchise values.”

Given the small-market haze surrounding this matchup, inevitably there will be online discourse about the television ratings for the World Series. Will fan interest dip because these aren’t marquee teams? Combined viewership for this year’s ALCS and NLCS was up slightly over last year, according to Nielsen.

The last two World Series, both of which featured the Dodgers, plus the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays, averaged over 15 million viewers, the most since 2017. Tampa’s first World Series berth in 2008 averaged 13 million viewers and was the lowest-rated series in history at the time. Its 2020 appearance played during Covid, and the Dodgers-Rays series drew an average audience of 9.8 million, which remains the second-smallest average all time, per Nielsen figures.

Market size has seemed to have an effect on Milwaukee and Tampa Bay during the playoffs. The Rays drew 3.7 million viewers against the Cleveland Guardians after having drawn 4 million against the Yankees, per Nielsen. The Brewers and the San Diego Padres drew only 2.6 million viewers in the Division Series, while Milwaukee vs. Los Angeles was seen by 7.9 million people a night.

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