The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
