The MLB playoffs are down to the final four teams, and a combination of star power and big media markets has the league primed for one of its best TV performances in years.

Fox Sports is airing the Dodgers-Mets National League Championship Series, after recording the most-watched MLB division series since 2015. 

The Dodgers-Padres and Mets-Phillies series combined to average 4.1 million viewers across nine games. That was boosted by a Friday night audience of 7.5 million for Los Angeles’s 2–0 series-clinching victory over San Diego, which was the most-watched LDS Game 5 since 2017. This is the first postseason for baseball’s $700 million man, Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani.

In the American League, TNT Sports gets the Yankees and Guardians. Final viewership from the ALDS has not yet been released, but preliminary numbers show that the Yankees-Royals and Guardians-Tigers series averaged 3 million viewers per game after Thursday—a 20% increase from last year’s ALDS on Fox Sports.

World Series Preview

The Yankees are favored to beat the Guardians, and New York making its first World Series since 2009 would no doubt bring a huge TV audience to MLB’s championship round.

Should that happen, a matchup with the Dodgers would bring potential coast-to-coast appeal, as well as viewers interested in Ohtani, while a faceoff with the Mets would maximize New York’s two-team baseball fan base. However, there are drawbacks to concentrating viewership in one area. In 2000, the Yankees and Mets met in the World Series, and viewership was down 24% from 1999’s Yankees-Braves clash.

Just as the NFL crossed the halfway point of its five-game international series schedule this season, the idea of playing a Super Bowl outside the U.S. is gaining new life.

Before the Bears beat the Jaguars 35–16 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about the potential move at an annual fan forum in London on Saturday. “We’ve always traditionally tried to play a Super Bowl in an NFL city—that was always sort of a reward for the cities that have NFL franchises,” Goodell said. “But things change. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if that happens one day.”

Super Bowl hosts are set through 2027, with New Orleans, San Francisco, and Los Angeles on tap over the next three years. Atlanta is expected to be awarded the 2028 Super Bowl. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium opened in 2019 after being specifically designed to host NFL games, in addition to its primary sport, soccer.

What Goodell Has Said Before

Goodell’s comments over the weekend are a slight shift from what he said about Super Bowls last year in London. “I think right now our formula will stay the same about playing in cities that have franchises,” the commissioner said in October 2023. 

While anything Goodell says should not be taken lightly, it should not be considered gospel, either. Last September, Goodell wouldn’t rule out the idea of a franchise outside the U.S. “I think it’s possible,” he said. This fall, Goodell has instead prioritized the potential of expanding the NFL’s international schedule to 16 games.

What’s Next?

The Jaguars “host” the Patriots at Wembley Stadium this coming Sunday, and the Panthers and Giants play in Munich, Germany next month. Next season, the NFL will play a game in Madrid, Spain, as part of an expanded eight-game international schedule. 
In London over the weekend, Goodell also said he had “no doubt” that Ireland—likely Dublin—will host an NFL game soon. “I know the Steelers really want to go there,” he said. Pittsburgh is one of three franchises with international marketing rights in the country, alongside the Jaguars and Jets.

ESPN and the NFL have significantly expanded the presence of Monday Night Football on Disney-owned broadcast network ABC—beginning with Monday’s Bills-Jets matchup—a move all but certain to further boost viewership for the showcase.

The networks said Friday they are scheduling six additional MNF games for the ABC simulcasts of ESPN coverage. The new games set for the dual-network presence are:

• Week 6 (Oct. 14): Bills at Jets
• Week 7 (Oct. 21): Ravens at Buccaneers
• Week 9 (Nov. 4): Buccaneers at Chiefs
• Week 11 (Nov. 18): Texans at Cowboys
• Week 12 (Nov. 25): Ravens at Chargers
• Week 16 (Dec. 23): Saints at Packers

Before this move, ESPN planned to show 11 NFL regular-season and playoff games this year on ABC, a marked reduction from last year’s schedule that featured 19 games either simulcast or shown exclusively on the broadcast network. With the revised schedule, that number reaches 17 and the overall 2024 MNF broadcast slate will now look much more like last year’s. 

Last year’s heavy slate was partly owed to the writers’ and actors’ strikes that disrupted entertainment programming for the start of the 2023–2024 television season, and ESPN used the extra exposure to help fuel a 29% lift in MNF ratings. This season, ABC’s prime-time programming is led largely by reality and game shows, making the presence of the NFL—by far the most-watched content across all of U.S. television, regardless of genre—a rather welcome one there.

Even before the shift, though, MNF has been performing well on ESPN so far this season. The network had the benefit of showing the two-time defending champion Chiefs this past Monday, drawing an average audience of 15.91 million, marking its highest figure for a non-ABC simulcast game since 2019, while a season-opening game involving the Jets and 49ers drawing an average of 20.5 million was the second-best Week 1 figure in ESPN’s 19 years with MNF. The network, however, has not released a year-over-year viewership comparison as MNF doubleheaders held during Weeks 3 and 4 have skewed such analysis.

Overall, though, the NFL has posted a 1% overall viewership lift for the 2024 season so far.

ESPN’s total, 25-game NFL lineup for the 2024 season (including the playoffs) now includes 17 contests either simulcast or shown exclusively on ABC, seven tied specifically to ESPN, and one exclusive to ESPN+.