The exciting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
