The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
