The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
