The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM 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 innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. 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 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
