The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
