The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
