The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
