The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
