The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
