The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
