World Series Crushes ‘Sunday Night Football’ by 36%

Deadline Hollywood reports that Game 5 of the World Series crushed Sunday Night Football.

The walkoff win for the Houston Astros garnered 36 percent more viewers than the Pittsburgh Steelers 20-15 victory over the Detroit Lions. The 12.8/24 overnight translates to about 23 million viewers for the Astros epic 13-12 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The World Series game was the most viewed baseball game in the L.A. market since the Anaheim Angels played in the Fall Classic in 2002. The series moves back to Los Angeles, which struggles to fill seats for the Rams and Chargers, on Tuesday for Game 6.

While the initial overnight ratings could be adjusted due to bad weather in Boston and Providence, a total of 23 million viewers would skyrocket this year’s World Series to near the all-time average of 23.6 million for a Game 5 going back to 1984 when their was little competition for network TV. As reported this weekend by Breitbart Sports, the comparable historic average for Game 6 is 27.0 and for Game 7 is 40 million — a number that shockingly was matched by the Cubs-Indians last year in a season in which the NFL was losing almost a fifth of its TV viewers.

The Deadline piece reports further:

With that, as the league and broadcasters have been losing ratings traction and snared in political controversy this season, last night’s Week 8 NFL game is down a hard 25% for SNF from last week’s gridiron battle. That Super Bowl LI re-match saw the New England Patriots blowout the Atlanta Falcons 23-7.

Year-to-year, Sunday’s Steelers’ win fell 17% from the comparable October 30, 2016 face-off when the big draw Dallas Cowboys beat the Philadelphia Eagles 29-23.

In contrast to the NFL protests during “The Star Spangled Banner,” only one Major League Baseball player knelt during an anthem, Bruce Maxwell, who was later arrested on unrelated gun charges.