The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
