The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
