The thrilling extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
