The thrilling extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
