The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
