The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
