The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
