The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
