The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M viewers 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 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
