The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 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 stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
