The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after 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 followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
