The thrilling extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
