The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
