World Series Final Game Captures 51M Viewers Across the United States, Canada and Japan Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
