The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
