The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver 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 came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
