The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
