The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
