The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 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 recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.