The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
