The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
