The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
