⚾ What to Make of this Historic World Series

Clash of the Titans doesn’t do this matchup justice.

It’s East vs. West. Skyscrapers vs. Beach. Bagels vs. Burritos. New York vs. Los Angeles. Let’s play ball.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s our honor to announce the MLB has just caught itself a massive break. To be honest, we might go as far to say the sport might be back to relevance. That’s right. Just by happenstance (or maybe it’s more about coaching and producing on the field), two of the most popular clubs and markets — the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers — are set to square off in what should be the most anticipated World Series in over a decade.

Truly this matchup has everything: Star power between Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, and Giancarlo Stanton of the Yankees and Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers. 6 hour flights between LA and NYC. And of course, this matchup consists of two of the biggest media markets in the entire U.S. So what should we expect as fans when it comes to this matchup? What will viewership and ratings look like as the MLB has seen an overall dip in fans within the last 2+ decades? Is this what the non-baseball fans have been looking for this whole time?

Let’s get after it… 

How prevalent is this Yankees/Dodgers series from a business perspective?

• Ticket Sales. Well folks, look no further than the ticket prices for each game:

  • As of Tuesday evening, the cheapest single tickets to Game 1 in Los Angeles and Game 3 in New York were going for ~$1,100 to $1,300 on StubHub — the company is already tracking to be its best-selling World Series in company history

  • As of 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the average ticket price for this year’s World Series was $1,667 on the resale site.

  • To give you an idea, the average price of a World Series ticket in 2023 was $884 and $1,303 in 2022.

• Demand for Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 at Dodger Stadium is robust, averaging $3,146, according to the TicketIQ data. But it’s even greater for Games 3–5 at Yankee Stadium, averaging $4,875 — more expensive than 8 of the last 15 Super Bowls.

  • All this is occurring as Dodger Stadium leads the MLB in capacity at 56,000, and Yankee Stadium is not far behind with 46,543.

• TickPick came out and said the Yankees-Dodgers World Series is the 2nd most-expensive event it has tracked with an overall average purchase price of $1,663, 114% higher than the 2023 World Series ($776).

• It’s most expensive World Series ticket since 2016 between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians — a matchup between two clubs who at the time hadn’t won a World Series for 108 years (Cubs) and 68 years (Guardians)…sorry Guardians just try to avoid 109 years 😬.

  • The median price of a ticket sold on StubHub for the three games in Chicago in that series was more than $3,000.

• Viewership. It’s no secret viewership trends up during the playoffs — especially when one of the sports you watch plays a 162-game season and we’re bored out of our minds come Game 112.

  • But the MLB viewership numbers have skyrocketed in 2024. The MLB Postseason is up 5% heading into the World Series with all games (Wild Card, LDS, LCS) averaging ~4M viewers vs. 3.8M million at the same point last season.

    • The LCS round (shown on Fox, FS1, TBS and truTV) averaged 5.3M viewers, up 2% from last year (even though last year had both the ALCS and NLCS go to seven games).

    • The NLCS went six games this year, while the ALCS went only five. Dodgers-Mets Game 6 on Sunday closed out the round with ~6.3M viewers on FS1, which is the 3rd best audience this postseason to date (behind only ~8.3M for Game 1 and ~7.3M for Dodgers-Padres game 5 in the NLDS).

  • And Fox will take the lead, again, as they have the World Series rights through 2028, but it’s a lock that Yankees-Dodgers will perform better than last year’s Texas Rangers/Arizona Diamondbacks matchup (9.1M average viewers — least amount in World Series history…ouch)

    • There have been three notable outliers in the last 15 years when it comes to viewerships

      • 2017 World Series (Houston Astros vs. Dodgers — 18.9M)

      • 2016 World Series (Cubs vs. Guardians — 22.8M)

      • 2009 World Series (New York Yankees vs. Philadelphia Phillies — 19.3M)

      • Oh and for good measure, the 2017 and 2016 World Series, each went the full seven games…which means more ticket sales and higher viewership!

What are ways the MLB can take advantage of this upcoming Godzilla vs. King Kong matchup?

• Celeb sightings. What brings young fans to watch? Sure the game but also knowing the celebrities they love and adore will be watching and attending games too. Which makes it even more important when two huge media markets like LA and NY are involved. Among attendees during the Division Series and League Championship Series in New York and Los Angeles were Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, LeBron James, Jimmy Kimmel, Spike Lee, Rob Lowe, Brad Pitt, Pat Sajak, and Taylor Swift.

• International viewership. Especially when it comes to Ohtani’s home country of Japan, viewership numbers could be even bigger there vs. the U.S. For some Division Series games, Japanese viewership of the Dodgers easily surpassed U.S. figures. With a 16-hour time difference between the U.S. West Coast and Japan, MLB playoff games typically air in the morning hours. To give you an idea, Game 1 will be happening Saturday morning in Tokyo — a factor that could help bring ratings there to the types of figures normally seen for late-stage NFL playoff games in the U.S.

• History mixed with marketing opportunities. It’s a marketing dream for the MLB if we’re being completely honest. Not just because of media markets but because these are two storied franchises with loads of history (27 titles for the Yankees, 7 for the Dodgers) with their own iconic battles dating back to the 1970’s and 1980’s — they’ve played in 11 different World Series already.

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