The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
