The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player 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 Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
