The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, 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 Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
