The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
