“I want to talk about which one is better right now. Frankly? I don’t even see it as close. Give me Dodgers-Padres right now over Yankees-Red Sox,” Ken Rosenthal said during the season. In that sense, it is a tough time to be a San Diego Padres fan as their biggest rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, keep winning World Series in their back-to-back season, their third in the last six years, in a time period where their only sweet memory is a 2022 NLCS run that feels like an age gap right now.

And now, some new data that gives Dodger fans the ultimate bragging rights is making that pain even worse. The roasting began with a simple tweet from reporter Bill Shaikin. The tweet read, “Quiz: Outside of Los Angeles, which U.S. city drew the best ratings for the World Series?” The answer was San Diego.

That “hate-watch” was not just casual; they did the same for the 2024 World Series, when the Dodgers played the New York Yankees. At that time, a report from FOX shows that after Los Angeles, the most popular market for the World Series was not New York but San Diego, because 41% of all TVs in San Diego were tuned in was second, just after Los Angeles 53% when New York’s market only posted a 33% share.

The Padres had a 2-1 series lead on the Dodgers and were one win away from advancing in the 2024 NLDS before their complete collapse. In the next two games, the Pades were outscored 10-0 and lost the series 3-2. It was brutal, right? So they have prayed for the Yankees to win, but the Dodgers won.

And this season, fans didn’t forget it, and we have seen it multiple times, like in their regular series match-up in June. In that time, the two teams have faced several heated moments of bench clearance, manager ejections, and HBP’s of players like Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. Though the Padres’ season ended in the Wild Card Series in early October, when they lost to the Cubs in the 2025, the WS viewership data just confirmed the trend..

“Thanks for the Support, Little Brother.” Fans Roast San Diego

Dodger fans who long claimed the Padres are obsessed now have the ultimate bragging rights and the data as statistical proof. So one said, “OMG you guys are obsesssssssed with us @Padres, @SanDiegoCounty☺️”. The second-highest rating for the second straight year when their team is long out of the series was not just casual viewing, and it just proves how fresh their NLDS elimination still is.

San Diego fans desperately wanted the Dodgers to lose this time after seeing them clinch the Title in 2024 against the Yankees. But the result was opposite. They won that time almost one-sidedly, and this time, after trailing for almost the whole game and almost losing the series in Game 7 Miracle happened. It was more painful, right? When someone like Miguel Rojas, who had not smashed more than 2 homers since the All-Star Break, hit the game-tying ninth-inning homer off the Blue Jays’ best closer, Jeff Hoffman, it was the ultimate heartbreak for the Padres fans. So, one fan writes, “How did the hate watch go, San Diego??”

Another fan from LA just repeated the same thought, saying, “Thanks for the support, little brother ❤️,” rubbing the wound of the Padres fans. So San Diego people can say it like it is a “Baseball Town” or “People will say hate watching was strong, but there are a lot of Dodgers fans in SD,” all they want, but they can not hide from the reality.

In the end, the motivation does not matter as this rivalry is actually good for baseball. So, one said, “Hate us or love us…San Diego watched lol,” as Dodgers fans know very well — with the Dodgers’ core of Ohtani, Betts, Freeman, Yamamoto, and Snell returning — San Diego’s “wait till next year” just gets longer.