The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
