The thrilling 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
