The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
