The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one 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 Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
