The thrilling extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 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 sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
