Jays-Dodgers World Series could be a ratings winner for MLB—even in the U.S.

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The ratings potential of Jays-Dodgers

The Toronto Blue Jays won Game 1 of the World Series Friday night, and in a fashion much more thrilling than the 11-4 final score suggests. They and the Los Angeles Dodgers were locked up at 2 until a nine-run sixth inning, which saw the Jays finally chase starter Blake Snell and then demolish the Los Angeles bullpen. And that game helps illustrate how this series could be a ratings winner for MLB, perhaps even in the U.S. where there's been some skepticism of what numbers it will do.

There are good reasons for that skepticism, of course. With the Jays in the series, there's only one local U.S. market involved, and local markets are often important to ratings. But, as I wrote in a discussion of the Jays-Yankees ALDS earlier for premium subscribers, a Jays' playoff run is just fine for MLB's business overall, even if it does lead to some U.S. numbers dropping.

The summary of that post is that the Jays provide huge Canadian ratings (6 million for Sportsnet for ALCS Game 7, a Jays' record for that network), often meaning the overall North American numbers are higher for series involving them. And even just on the U.S. side, one year of ratings doesn't make a major difference to MLB's TV contracts. Lower ratings based on teams could be more of an issue for U.S. broadcasters such as Fox, whose ad spots can be impacted by ratings (especially in terms of makegoods for low ratings), but even one down year isn't terrible for them. But, since then, there's been a lot to suggest that the Jays can even provide strong U.S. ratings, and they're up against a great ratings opponent in the Dodgers. Thus, the U.S. story could work out more favorably than many imagine, especially after a long-close Game 1 that ended with a Jays' win.

On the Jays' front, that division series against the Yankees started with a year-over-year U.S. decline that stood out amongst the division series, but bounced back for strong results in Games 3 and 4. And, even more impressively, their ALCS against the Mariners (from the 13th-largest Nielsen market, versus No. 1 and 2 for the Yankees and Dodgers) hung in there against Yankees-Guardians last year, and had a Game 7 that was the highest-watched ALCS game since 2017 (and the second-most-watched LCS game of the last five years as well):

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FOX Sports PR @FOXSportsPR As the @BlueJays punched their ticket to the World Series, FOX Sports posted the most-watched #ALCS game on any network since 2017 - and @MLBONFOX's most-streamed Championship Series game ever. 📈 9:58 PM • Oct 22, 2025 191 Retweets 1203 Likes Read 55 replies

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That's all just on the Jays' side, too. There's a lot to consider around the Dodgers' own rating potential. For one thing, their World Series win over the Yankees last year averaged 15.1 million viewers (the highest number since 2017) despite going just five games. It's hard to specifically quantify how much of that was the Dodgers and what the impact will be of them going for their second-straight title (sometimes viewers tune in to see back-to-back stories, sometimes they tire of seeing the same team), but having Los Angeles make another deep playoff run has been just fine for MLB thus far.

And that's before considering the Japanese ratings impact from the Dodgers and their Japanese superstars, including Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Los Angeles averaged 7.34 million viewers in Japan for their NLCS sweep of the Brewers. That also comes on the heels of a record season overall in Japanese MLB ratings. The Japanese ratings don't directly help the U.S. ones, but they're certainly good for MLB's overall business.

But even from a strictly-U.S. perspective, this year's MLB playoffs overall have posted the league's best U.S. ratings since 2017. And Fox's Mike Mulvihill has predicted that will be the case for the full playoffs if this World Series goes five games or more. Some of that is about changing Nielsen methodology, with the Big Data+Panel approach brought in across all networks this fall (which has provided significant boosts to many sports broadcasts), but it goes beyond that.

The U.S. MLB numbers to this point have been quite positive, even with this deep run by the Jays. And a Game 1 that was so close for so much of it (the Jays' nine-run sixth came around 10:30 p.m. ET) is an excellent sign for this series' overall U.S. numbers. It also suggests that this may be a long series, as the Dodgers came in as -210 favorites, with the Jays at +175. Here are my for-fun-only U.S.-only ratings predictions of this series based on series length (check out Douglas Pucci's Programming Insider roundup for a further collection of predictions from other sports and sports media figures):

Four games: 12.5 million viewers
Five games: 13 million viewers
Six games: 14 million viewers
Seven games: 14.5 million viewers
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We'll see how it ultimately turns out. But all the evidence to this point suggests this matchup will be just fine for MLB, including from the standpoint of U.S. ratings.