The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members 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 also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
