The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes 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 World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The overall 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 and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
