The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
