World Series Final Game Captures 51M Viewers In the United States, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The exciting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.