The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
