The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
