The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
