The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
