The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
