The exciting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
