The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
