The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
