The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
