The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
