The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
