The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
