The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
