The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
