The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
