The exciting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% 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 increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
