The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
