The exciting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
