The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
