The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
