With the NFL in turmoil over their players continued protesting of the national anthem, it seems as though America’s original national pastime is back — at least during the MLB World Series.
Game five of the World Series between the National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers and the American League champion Houston Astros absolutely smashed the NFL’s “Sunday Night Football” matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions.
According to Sports Illustrated:
The thrilling 10-inning win by the Astros in Game 5 of the World Series drew a 12.8 overnight, per Austin Karp of Sports Business Daily. That topped the 9.4 overnight rating, per an industry source, for the Steelers’ win over the Lions on NBC.
Karp said the MLB numbers for the Boston and Hartford markets did not come in due to weather so the likelihood is the baseball rating is even higher. NBC said the Sunday Night Football ratings also did not include the Boston, Hartford and Providence markets.
Each ratings point represents one percent of households in the U.S. that have television. According to Nielsen’s National Television Household Universe Estimates, “there are 119.6 million TV homes in the U.S. for the 2017-2018 TV season.”
If we go by those numbers, and the ratings for both World Series game five and “Sunday Night Football,” approximately 4,066,400 more households chose to watch baseball over football Sunday evening.
That is a staggering amount of eyeballs tuning out football for baseball, considering it’s not exactly known how many people reside in each household.