The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
