MLB Television Ratings Showing Double-Digit Growth In 2025

[Brock Beauchamp]

In a recent roundup on MLB.com, early results on MLB television ratings were revealed. They include:

• MLB on Fox is up 10%
• MLB on ESPN is up 22%
• MLB Tuesday on TBS is up 16%

Perhaps most importantly, it appears substantial gains are being made in the 18-34 age demographic, a decades-long weakness of Major League Baseball.

This is in sharp contrast to the World Series, which has been in decline for years and is often used as a benchmark for the overall popularity of the sport. I was able to find World Series ratings dating back to 1968, and until 2007 the World Series never carried a rating under 10. That slowly spiraled until it hit its low-water mark of 4.7 in 2023 as the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks squared off.

MLB and Commissioner Rob Manfred have aggressively pushed rules changes, largely in an attempt to capture younger demographics that have abandoned baseball in favor of football and basketball.

Is baseball on the rebound with fans or is this just a blip on the radar?

View full rumor

[JosephC]

Biggest % jump on ESPN, and ESPN dumped them.  Something not adding up here.

[Frisbee Slider]

9 hours ago, JosephC said:

Biggest % jump on ESPN, and ESPN dumped them.  Something not adding up here.

ESPN exercised their opt out prior to this season. ESPN, owned by Disney, has certainly experienced some financial turbulence in recent years.

[Brian]

Good to see the ratings are up, every sports fan I talked to as to why they don't like watching is that it was to slow paced.  But the pitch clock sure has helped ratings I believe. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

10 hours ago, JosephC said:

Biggest % jump on ESPN, and ESPN dumped them.  Something not adding up here.

1 hour ago, Frisbee Slider said:

ESPN exercised their opt out prior to this season. ESPN, owned by Disney, has certainly experienced some financial turbulence in recent years.

Yeah, I think ESPN is cost-cutting for pretty obvious reasons. They've been in financial straits for awhile.

Also, it wouldn't surprise me that any contract for MLB rights signed was signed at an inflated rate ESPN no longer wanted to pay.

[Frisbee Slider]

Streaming services seem to have boat loads of money to spend on content. Get ready for ‘Sunday Night Baseball on Amazon Prime’

[LouisEly]

1 hour ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Streaming services seem to have boat loads of money to spend on content. Get ready for ‘Sunday Night Baseball on Amazon Prime’

Except for YouTubeTV.  They seem to still think that they can get content for free.  Lost MLB Network two years ago and it still isn't back.

[Frisbee Slider]

I wonder how much of the ratings increases are because of the rise of super teams?

[owbc]

All of the above. Pace of play changes, expanded postseason, and marketable superstars (Judge, Ohtani) being the big ones.

 

[TURBO]

6 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

ESPN exercised their opt out prior to this season. ESPN, owned by Disney, has certainly experienced some financial turbulence in recent years.

ESPN needs to go back to sports, and knock off all the other crap that has made them unwatchable.

No one needs political takes from a sports channel.

[Fear The Chorizo]

1 hour ago, TURBO said:

ESPN needs to go back to sports, and knock off all the other crap that has made them unwatchable.

No one needs political takes from a sports channel.

It seems to me like once they started buying up rights to broadcast games (which actually started their slope of budget problems as an entity), their brass opted to limit the amount of actual sportscenter shows (which is what made ESPN great in the first place).  It's like once they could broadcast games, they couldn't fill the rest of their space with actual sports news content/highlights/actual analysis anymore - especially for games they didn't carry on one of their stations.

It's too bad.

Reels of some of the old Sportscenter commercials are just fantastic.  The "Michael Jordan" one that follows an unassuming everyday joe around who happens to be named Michael Jordan and seeing everyone's initial reaction of disappointment when they realize he isn't "his airness" when he gets to the hostess stand, hotel lobby, answers the door for pizza, etc. is one of my all-time favorites

[MilwaukeeBeers]

1 hour ago, TURBO said:

ESPN needs to go back to sports, and knock off all the other crap that has made them unwatchable.

No one needs political takes from a sports channel.

Also the BS agenda of pushing out every small market star every chance they can get (Giannis) has made me outright quit watching all together (unless there is MNF) 

[tmwiese55]

5 minutes ago, Fear The Chorizo said:

It seems to me like once they started buying up rights to broadcast games, their brass opted to limit the amount of actual sportscenter shows (which is what made ESPN great in the first place).  It's like once they could broadcast games, they couldn't fill the rest of their space with actual sports news content/highlights/actual analysis anymore - especially for games they didn't carry on one of their stations.

It's too bad.

Feel free to explain that more as I'm not sure I grasp it and might not fully know it.     

Seems to me they do own the right to highlights of all sports, since they well do show at least some of all major sports.   That's one of the things I never grasped as to why they've gone the route of paying guys tens of millions to argue about sports rather than just air the summaries/highlights of sports (for free, since they already pay for it however they do).   Pay a random host 2-300K or Stephen A 25 mil, you're still getting the same ratings of people who just default toss espn on in the background.   Real sports fans just want to see the sports, not people argue about sports anyway

Best route these days is to neve turn espn on other than for live games. The 3-4 times I have in the last few years do to being in a hotel it has proven still be as awful as I recalled

[Brock Beauchamp]

Once ESPN dropped Baseball Tonight, it was pretty much dead to me. I have no use for the channel anymore, their content is people screaming at one another and I get can better highlights and analysis in a dozen other places.

[MVP2110]

Everyone has nostalgia for the old Sportscenter days, myself included, but the truth is sports highlights are easily accessible now in a variety of different ways. The old model of Sportscenter doesn't work for ratings. They have to try and create content in other ways. Now the way they've treated MLB specifically is an issue I think ESPN can and should take blame for. 

[Cool Hand Lucroy]

3 hours ago, TURBO said:

ESPN needs to go back to sports, and knock off all the other crap that has made them unwatchable.

No one needs political takes from a sports channel.

I think sports are always and inherently political. I mean, anytime we talk about salary caps and small market vs. large market, we're talking about ideology and economic theory. I suppose you could argue people are fed up with ESPN being "partisan," but it seems to me that, with a few exceptions, most of their partisanship is pretty shallow anyway, and they did just cancel Around the Horn, which, despite its absurd format, was the closest thing they had to The Sports Reporters. I love E:60 and would watch 30 for 30 and a new-style sports reporters all day, so, IMO, the trouble with the channel is mostly that the analysis is way too heavy on Crossfire, Stephen A. Silliness, and too light on actual sport and society thoughtfulness.

As for baseball in particular, I think the rule changes have helped. I also think this stuff goes in cycles, and when you've got really good teams in LA, NY (x2), Chicago, and Philly, that's just really going to jam your numbers, especially when most of those teams also have national appeal. You could call that superteams. I am glad for the sports increased popularity. I also have some concerns about what kind of behavior might be incentivized if that is indeed a big part of the driving force.

[LouisEly]

17 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

Everyone has nostalgia for the old Sportscenter days, myself included, but the truth is sports highlights are easily accessible now in a variety of different ways. The old model of Sportscenter doesn't work for ratings. They have to try and create content in other ways. Now the way they've treated MLB specifically is an issue I think ESPN can and should take blame for. 

I disagree.  We still have local news at 5pm, national news at 5:30pm, local news at 6pm and again at 10pm and in the mornings.  People can get news in other ways, but people still watch the news on TV.  

Lots of people would rather watch the news on a big-screen TV than on a laptop screen or their tiny phone screen.  I think the same goes for sports highlights.  The problem is more that the "sports news" changed.

[MVP2110]

4 minutes ago, LouisEly said:

I disagree.  We still have local news at 5pm, national news at 5:30pm, local news at 6pm and again at 10pm and in the mornings.  People can get news in other ways, but people still watch the news on TV.  

Lots of people would rather watch the news on a big-screen TV than on a laptop screen or their tiny phone screen.  I think the same goes for sports highlights.  The problem is more that the "sports news" changed.

That might be true of the older generation, but it's hardly true of the younger generation. I'm 33 and neither I nor a single member of my social circle watch local news. I get all my local news from places like reddit and social media My mom still does though every night. 

[da swedish german]

watched sportscenter yesterday for the first time in forever. surprisingly half the content was baseball.

then I remembered there was literally nothing else going on in the sports world

[Paul77]

21 hours ago, LouisEly said:

I disagree.  We still have local news at 5pm, national news at 5:30pm, local news at 6pm and again at 10pm and in the mornings.  People can get news in other ways, but people still watch the news on TV.  

It probably has more to do with the fact that local news is comparatively cheap to produce for the affiliates. 

[JosephC]

I can't see the article because it's behind a paywall, but it looks like there is a report in The Athletic that ESPN is now talking with MLB about a new TV deal.