The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
