The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
