The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – 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 full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
