The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
