The nail-biting extended clash where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership 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 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
