The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
