The exciting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
