The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
