The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
