The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic 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 viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
