The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
