The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
