World Series Game 5 crushed 'Sunday Night Football' in TV ratings
The NFL's decline in television ratings took its biggest hit yet on Sunday when their marquee "Sunday Night Football" game lost to the World Series Game 5 among sports fans watching on TV.
Sunday's Game 5 between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians drew an estimated 21.5 million viewers, according to Variety. That easily topped the estimated 17.2 million viewers for the NFL's Sunday night matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, a game featuring two of the NFL's most popular teams.
While it may seem like a no-brainer for baseball's championship event to beat out a regular-season football game, it is actually far more common for the football game to win. Here are the audience sizes for the last four years when the World Series went head-to-head with "Sunday Night Football," according to Sports Media Watch.
Clearly the World Series and MLB playoffs have been boosted by the presence of the Chicago Cubs for the first time since 1945. However, NFL ratings have been consistently down this season.
Maybe this is just a "Perfect Storm" for Major League Baseball, but for once we have seen that the all-powerful NFL can be beaten, even in their biggest time slot.