The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
