The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
