The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
