The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
