Baseball scored a rare ratings victory over the NFL boosted by a thrilling World Series. Could it mean a challenge to football’s TV dominance? Don’t bet on it
Early last Thursday morning, as the champagne flew in the Chicago Cubs clubhouse, Fox put to bed a rollicking World Series that smashed all expectations of what modern baseball can do on television with a 25.2 rating for Game 7. Later that night, on the NFL Network, the Atlanta Falcons clobbered the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and drew a once-unfathomable 3.2 rating, a 35% drop from the same Thursday night game last year. While in other years, the Falcons and Bucs game might have been written off as an anomaly, it was yet another example of how the NFL’s once-booming ratings have been crashing all season.
And it raised an interesting question: If the NFL’s ratings are falling this fast can baseball build off the popularity of this year’s Chicago-Cleveland World Series and challenge football’s timeworn television dominance?
Related: Mediocrity on turf: the NFL is stumbling, but will it recover?
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