After last year’s World Series repeat by the big-market L.A. Dodgers drove World Series advertising revenue to record levels, Fox has drawn a far different hand in this year’s Fall Classic.
The current matchup pits the Milwaukee Brewers, who play in one of the smallest TV markets in the sport, against the Tampa Bay Rays, who are not a national TV draw. When the Brewers jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, media pundits assumed Fox was about to take a bath, with make-goods and shortfalls in the forecast.
Fate intervened Tuesday night. With the Brewers three outs away from winning the first Series in the franchise’s 57-year history, the Rays rallied in the 12th inning to beat the Brewers and make the series 3-1.
The turnaround gave the network and parent Fox Corp. hope of a brighter outcome. Yet even if the series doesn’t continue beyond Wednesday night’s Game 5, a report by Wall Street firm Guggenheim Securities maintains that Fox won’t take a major financial hit. The report comes ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings report on Monday.
No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit to force a Game 6, let alone a Game 7, in a World Series. The one and only time a 3-0 hole was overcome was in 2004, when the Boston Red Sox beat the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series.
Total average viewership for the first two games of the Series last Friday and Saturday hit 12.26 million and 10.85 million, per Nielsen, about 7% below 2025 levels. Michael Mulvihill, President, Insights and Analytics for Fox Corp., wrote on X that the tune-in was “better than most were predicting” and “better than anything out there that’s not the NFL.” Addressing the knock on the smaller-than-L.A. cities vying for the title, he added, “More important, this ‘small market’ series affirms one of the bedrock appeals of sports: Everyone has a chance.”
The Guggenheim deep dive, from a team led by Michael Morris, said Fox took in about $370 million in revenue from the 2025 Major League Baseball postseason, roughly 7% of annual company revenue. Thus far in 2026, the firm said, ad dollars from the MLB postseason are at around $275 million. If the Brewers-Rays matchup reaches a Game 6, the tally would rise to $324 million, with the full seven games pushing it to $373 million.
The postseason accounts for about two-thirds of Fox’s annual ad revenue from MLB, according to Guggenheim.
Amortization – a financial accounting tool to spread out the timing of expenses – will help Fox limit the financial hit if Milwaukee wraps things up in five games, the report argues.
Quoting from Fox’s own SEC filings, Morris wrote that the company “amortizes multi-year sports rights ‘primarily… based on the ratio of each contract’s current period attributable revenue to the estimated total remaining attributable revenue.'” Under that scenario, he added, a “shorter postseason lowers both revenue and rights expense in the quarter.”
Fox’s current MLB rights deal runs through the 2028, at a reported $729 million a year. Using that math, Morris estimates that about 27% of the hit to earnings would not hit the current-year quarter. “The rights cost not recognized in [the October-to-December quarter] is deferred, not saved; it shifts to the 2027 and 2028 seasons,” the analyst wrote.
Guggenheim reaffirmed its “buy” rating on Fox shares, with a 12-month price target of $85. The stock has slipped 13% in 2026 to date, at about $64 in mid-day trading Wednesday.
Regardless of who wins this year’s Series, media rights holders (and fans) will enter the off-season feeling uneasy due to the MLB’s expected labor turmoil. The current collective bargaining agreement between the players and the owners is set to expire in December, which means a lockout and possible cancellation of 2027 games could follow.
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