The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
