The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
