2026 World Series Game 4 Extra Innings Instant Classic Posts Big TV Viewership
· Yahoo Sports
ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA - OCTOBER 27: Ben Williamson #15 of the Tampa Bay Rays celebrates with teammates after hitting an RBI Single during the twelfth inning to defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in game four of the 2026 World Series at Tropicana Field on October 27, 2026 in St Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)
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Getty ImagesThe 2026 World Series between two low-payroll teams with media markets far smaller than teams in recent Fall Classicscontinues to exceed expectations.
Tuesday’s extra-innings classic saw the Tampa Bay Rays stave off elimination with a walk-off RBI single by Ben Williamson in the bottom of the 12th to win 4-3 over the Milwaukee Brewers, and has a preliminary average viewership number of approximately 13.5 million viewers across FOX, and FOX Deportes. The numbers were first reported by Alex Sherman of CNBC but confirmed by a television industry source that spoke on background as they were not authorized to publicly speak to the figures.
Final “big panel” numbers by Nielsen Media are scheduled to be released on Thursday.
If the numbers hold, with 2024 and 2025, when the Los Angeles Dodgers played against the Blue Jays last year and the New York Yankees the year before, it will be the most-viewed Game 4 dating back to 2018, when the Boston Red Sox faced the Dodgers and pulled 13.615 million.
Below shows the preliminary number for Tuesday’s Game 4 along with final Game 4 World Series numbers via Nielsen.
Given that the Brewers have the 19th-ranked player payroll (projected $142 million) in Major League Baseball’s smallest media market going up against the Rays with the third-lowest, player payroll (projected $90 million), with neither team sporting major stars, the viewership numbers are far better than most anyone projected, especially when accounting for the large market sizes in the last two Fall Classics.
The wild card in all of this will be whether the series moves past Wednesday’s Game 5 and what the Game 3 numbers ultimately show. For Game 3, the numbers have not yet surfaced but will assuredly be down by comparison to Games 1, 2, and 4.
Game 3 runs up against several viewership challenges. For one, the game landed on a “sports equinox” day in which the NFL, NBA, NHL, and WNBA were all playing at the same time as the World Series. The big one of those is clearly the NFL with Monday Night Football. The other factor that will assuredly put a significant drag on the viewership number is that the game was a blowout – a 10-1 shellacking by the Brewers. That score may have pushed fans to flip the channel off FOX. Still, FOX Sports reps feel that given the context of what the challenges are for Game 3, it will come out better than expected.
This article was originally published on Forbes.com