The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% 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 increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
