The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
