The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
