The thrilling extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
