The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
