The exciting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
