The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
