The exciting extended matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
