The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
