The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
