The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
