The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
