The thrilling 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
