The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, 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 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
