The exciting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
