The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
