The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
