Who is America Rooting For in the Postseason? Brewers are the Overwhelming Choice

[Steve Drumwright]

Image courtesy of USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

How much is America behind the Milwaukee Brewers? If you are to believe hashtags from a questionable website loaded with bots, the Brewers have overwhelming support in the NL Championship Series.

That is because of the Crew's opponent, the two-time defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and their mega-payroll. In fact, all the payrolls of the Brewers and the two AL Championship participants are each less than what the Dodgers will pay just in competitive-balance tax penalties ($183 million).

In data from Saturday up until just before first pitch of Monday's Game 2, the sports-betting website thesportsinsider.com said fans in 34 of the 50 states had thrown their support behind the Brew Crew, who posted MLB's best record at 103-59. The Dodgers, who entered the NLCS as the favorite and have been the top choice to win this year's World Series since the final out of the 2025 Fall Classic, accumulated just three states: California, Nevada and Hawaii. In addition to taking most of the Midwest and other states to the west of Wisconsin, the Brewers also pulled in Alaska, several Northeastern states including New York and Massachusetts, as well as Southern states, with Georgia and Alabama among them.

Over in the AL Championship Series, the Tampa Bay Rays were only able to win their home state, Florida, while the Cleveland Guardians took care of many of the rest of the states surrounding Ohio and into the Mid-Atlantic, getting 12.

As Brewers fans painfully know, the team has not won a World Series since the franchise came into existence in 1969 as the Seattle Pilots. Neither have the Rays, who started in 1998. Cleveland has won two World Series, the last in 1948.

Sports Insider, using geotagged data, tracked various hashtags on X.com, more commonly known as Twitter. The primary hashtags counted were the Brewers' #ThisIsMyCrew, the Dodgers' #ITFDB and #LetsGoDodgers, the Rays' #ForTampaBay and the Guardians' #GuardsBall. Also, phrases such as "I'm rooting for the Brewers" were tracked. The timeframe of the social-media posts for all four teams began from the time the ALCS matchup was set Saturday.

According to the website Bitdefender, a cybersecurity and software company, the social-media website's owner said Twitter suspended 800 million accounts in 2024 for breaching rules on spam and manipulation. Other estimates have between 9% and 15% of accounts as bots, an alarming number.

There was no data on how many of those bots are Brewers (or Dodgers) fans, but would they tell you the truth anyway?

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[Team Canada]

33 minutes ago, Steve Drumwright said:

If you are to believe hashtags from a questionable website loaded with bots

If a sentence like this exists, it begs the question of should the article even be written.