The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
