The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
