MLB took over Brewers broadcasts this year. The ratings went way up

The 2026 Milwaukee Brewers season was unlike any that came before, with the team racking up 103 wins and reaching the World Series. It also looked unlike any that came before, thanks to a change in broadcast.

With Major League Baseball overtaking the game-broadcast production for eight teams this year after the financial troubles of Main Street Sports (the company that oversaw the Bally Sports Wisconsin branding), Brewers games got a makeover, and the ratings reflected a renewed interest in the product.

Brewers local viewership, including "linear" (people watching on cable or satellite) and "streaming" (people watching with the app), was up 25%, according to MLB. Among the 29 U.S. teams, the Brewers had the top market rating of 6.29, which essentially means 6% of televisions inside the market were turned to Brewers games when they were on.

It does bear mentioning that Nielsen changed its national metric recording process in early September 2025 , meaning it switched to what it considers more accurate data collection after most of the 2025 season had been played, but that didn't impact local data collection.

A tweak was made to the local data-collection process in September 2026, meaning one month of the 2026 numbers could be slightly impacted. For the most part, the 2025 and 2026 numbers in Milwaukee were collected under the same system.

The upgrade in broadcast quality has been a noticeable development in 2026.

"I think the telecasts are a lot better these days, and a lot of people are really tuning in," said Billy Chambers, executive vice president of local media with MLB. "Another big thing is the timing of the game. The game moves along so much better, and that helps attendance.

"If you add up the total of number minutes [people in the market who watched Brewers baseball], it outranks any television show, cable and broadcast."

The Brewers went all-in on the improvements available through the MLB production , including a drone camera, ump camera, dirt camera and more. Access went up, from in-game interviews to handheld cameras following players through a gauntlet of high-fives in the dugout after a home run.

The Brewers aren't the only team to see a marked increase. The Colorado Rockies , who moved from a provider that wasn't as widely available as broadcasts are now, saw a viewership increase of 49%, even in a down season. The St. Louis Cardinals (29%), Cleveland Guardians (28%) and Brewers (25%) all went way up, as well. In all, 11 of the 14 teams whose broadcasts are handled by MLB went up with the combined linear and streaming numbers.

It was impressive for MLB, considering it added eight teams to its portfolio when Main Street collapsed, on fairly short notice before the 2026 season.

"The big thing that we preach to our group is we want to be stewards of the team's brand," Chambers said. "We work really hard with the teams for access to the players, that's what really drives it. The Brewers were 100 percent behind this new technology … that technology will only get better."

Across baseball, MLB said viewership was up 10%, boosted by a huge season from Toronto on Sportsnet after the Blue Jays reached the World Series last year. The Brewers, of course, had a huge season on the field, too, though they've been riding a wave of success in the past five years, so that wasn't entirely novel.

Weekday attendance across baseball was also up 13%, something MLB spokesman Matt Bourne credited at least in part to a faster-moving game and relative certainty that a contest will be over in three hours or less.

The Brewers' in-person attendance of 2,788,933 ranked 11th across Major League Baseball, up from 12th last year when Milwaukee brought 2,650,089 through the gates. It's an increase of 5% from 2025. It's also the highest the Brewers have finished in the MLB rankings since 2021 and the highest turnout since 2019.

Fox declares NLCS a huge ratings winners

Keep that previous Nielsen caveat in mind, but Fox sports touted the National League Championship Series between the Brewers and Dodgers to be the best viewership of any LCS on any network since 2015.

That's impressive considering one of the teams, the Brewers, plays in MLB's smallest market. And they manhandled the Dodgers badly enough that ticket prices for Games 3 and 4 fell at Dodger Stadium.

Fox said it was the most-watched Game 4 telecast on any network since 2018 and more than 7,300,000 fans were watching at peak audience.