The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
