The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
