The exciting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
