The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
