The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
