The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
