The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
