The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
