The exciting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
