The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where 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 matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
