The exciting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.