The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
