The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
