I don’t think there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind that sports are a big draw. Both domestically and internationally, sports dominate event attendance, TV viewership and even betting. There’s something about the gladiator mentality that draws people in to see who will be the last one standing in a battle of muscle and strategy.
The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night, scoring their first World Series win since 1988, giving the former Brooklyn team their seventh championship title. Though, for some reason, the event also scored the lowest TV ratings in the history of the championship series. This is even more shocking considering the fact that we’re in the midst of a pandemic where we have nothing but time on our hands to tune in.
The first five of the six games of the 2020 World Series never crept too far past the 10 million mark. For comparison, the lowest viewed World Series game prior to 2020 was in 2012 where they only racked up 12.64 million viewers.
While we might attribute the dip in viewers to any number of reasons, the truth of the matter is that sports as a whole has taken a hit in 2020. With seasons delayed or put on hiatus, we weren’t sure we were going to have much in the way of sports this year. While most have come back in some capacity or another, it’s been limited. The MLB regular season saw only 60 games, a far cry from the 162-game marathon teams typically play.
There were no attendees at any game in the regular season, which zaps much of the energy from the live events and the inconsistency of the seasons and gameplay have probably made it hard for the general public to follow. Sure, there were some fans in attendance during the World Series but far from full capacity. There are of course those diehard fans who are tuning and paying attention, but that only accounts for a fraction of viewers.
I’ll admit, I had no idea we were in the midst of the World Series until the Dodgers were crowned its victor. That’s unusual for me and an anomaly in a year full of anomalies.
If things return to normal or at least semi-normal for the 2021 season, perhaps we’ll see more fans tuning in, but if I’ve learned anything this year, we’re not sure what the future looks like until it arrives.
