The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
