The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
