The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, 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 most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
