The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
