The exciting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
