The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
