The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
