The exciting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
