The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
