The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase 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, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
