The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
