The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
