The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
