The exciting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
