The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
