Fall Classic Final Game Attracts Over 50 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
