Fall Classic Final Game Captures Over 50 Million Viewers In the US, Canadian and Japan Regions.
The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic 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 over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
