The 2025 Major League Baseball season is in full swing, coming off a season that hit a home run in attendance and viewership last year.  

The league said it recorded its largest attendance in seven years with 71,348,366 at the end of the 2024 season. ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball had an average audience of 1,505,000 viewers, finishing with its most-watched season in five years. In streaming games, MLB.TV set a new high of 14.5 billion minutes watched. MLB’s international viewership saw an +18% increase, as regular season games were played in Korea, Mexico City and London last year. The league’s social media platforms each recorded double-digit growth from the previous season, including Instagram (+28%), X (formerly Twitter) (+69%), Facebook (+17%) and YouTube (+33%). The 2024 World Series averaged 15.81 million viewers across all platforms and was the most-watched Fall Classic since 2017.  

The impressive season in baseball engagement in 2024 also saw the games shortened to two hours and 36 minutes, the shortest average in 40 years and more action on the base paths with 3,617 total stolen bases, the highest since 1915. 

So, why exactly has MLB had a recent surge in attendance, viewership, streaming and fan engagement?  

Temple Now caught up with Bryant Simon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of History at Temple University’s College of Liberal Arts, to get his thoughts on why MLB viewership increased in 2024, the impact of rule changes and what baseball can do to improve the ratings.  

Bryant Simon is an expert in American history and is an elected member of the Society of the American Historians. He is the author of four books about U.S. history, most recently The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives. (Photography by Joseph V. Labolito) 

Temple Now: Why was the 2024 World Series the most-watched Fall Classic since 2017?  

Bryant Simon: To have the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the New York Yankees, two storied franchises from the two biggest cities in the country, with real star power on each team, headline last year’s World Series was a dream matchup. It’s like baseball is willing to almost falsely engineer that matchup since there is no salary cap. First, you have to look at the extra boost of media coverage it received, giving them their best ratings at the Fall Classic since 2017. And, Aaron Judge standing at 6 feet 7 inches is like a Paul Bunyan-type hero in a big market like New York and his ability to hit countless, towering home runs has also been a factor in higher viewership. Then, you have the emergence of Shohei Ohtani—also in the mega-market of LA—who is like a unicorn as arguably the best hitter in the game and has the potential to be an All-Star pitcher, something we haven’t seen in a long time. And of course, as a star player from Japan, he has been a key factor in improving MLB’s U.S. and international ratings. His quiet demeanor kind of makes him mysterious, adding to his appeal. It’s hard to imagine two better figures in two better places to market the sport.  

TN: What new MLB rules led to an increase in viewership in 2024?  

BS: For years, MLB has been dogged by the perception that the games took too long for fans, especially members of this generation, who are used to immediate gratification. When you have sat through two and a half hours or three hours of a baseball game, you just want to see the end of it. So, in 2023, MLB made several important rule changes to speed up the game and increase the offensive production to attract more fans. [node:sidebar_text]They included a pitch clock to shorten the time between pitches. And the bases were made larger, which encouraged more stolen bases, which has always been an exciting part of the game. Also, the new limits on pitching changes, mound visits, infield shifts and a pitcher’s pickoff attempts also helped to speed up games. All these changes drove more viewership in 2024.

TN: In addition to rules changes, what other factors have helped to increase engagement?  

BS: It’s the relationship between watching the game on television and going live. Watching the game at home is how you build fans, right, so if more fans are tuning in, more will go to the games in person. At the same time, the MLB looked at what baseball content younger audiences consumed on social media and how they streamed games on their phones. The league became more active across social media platforms, including more player engagement and partnerships with content creators. The MLB app enhanced the streaming experience for fans by adding interactive features like real-time data and in-game experiences that helped attract more fans.  

Also, MLB teams are constantly tweaking the fan experience at ballparks, trying to make each stadium unique and different. The scoreboards have become more interactive, providing all kinds of live game data and other key metrics. There are more food options than the traditional hot dogs and peanuts. For example, you can only get a Federal Donuts chicken sandwich and one of their amazing donuts at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philly. Or you can’t get that Primanti Brothers sandwich at a game unless you are at the Pittsburgh Pirates’ PNC Park. Also, these days, there is a lot of destination sports tourism, especially when top teams play. Fans are willing to travel for weekend series, even internationally. Last year, when the Phillies and New York Mets played a two-game series in London, the 50,000 fans showed up for each of the games, many of them from Philly and New York.  

TN: What do you think MLB can do to improve ratings moving forward?  

BS: The internationalization of the game has been really interesting and you have some amazing stars right now like Judge, Ohtani and Bryce Harper, so baseball needs to continue to look into new strategies to highlight and market the game, its ballparks and individual star players, like especially on social media. Also, there are conversations around increasing the use of electronic assistance in baseball to improve the accuracy of calling balls and strikes, which could help ratings. But that could also eliminate umpires. Then who would fans get mad at? I also heard The Ringer’s Bill Simmons talk on his podcast about how his 17-year-old son Ben doesn’t watch NBA games yet still knows every NBA player just by watching highlights on TikTok and 20-minute condensed versions of games online. So, I think the MLB should look for new ways to showcase highlights of their game’s most exciting aspects on social media and condensed versions of its games could make it more digestible for even the casual fan. More international games and competitions will increase viewership and expand the MLB’s reaching and ratings.