The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
