The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
