The thrilling 11-inning clash where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market 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 last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
