The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
