The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
