Featuring Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in their first World Series appearance, the Fall Classic averaged 12.9 million viewers in Japan and became the championship series in the country’s history.
Adding up the ratings in the United States, the five-game series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees averaged 28.7 million viewers in both countries.
The Dodgers’ 4-2 victory in the second game drew an average of 15.9 million people in Japan and became the most watched postseason game in the nation’s history, according to information from Major League Baseball.
Yamamoto was the Dodgers’ starter in that game in which he allowed only one run and one hit in six and a third innings.
Tokyo is 19 hours ahead of New York and 16 hours ahead of Los Angeles, meaning that matches began at nine in the morning on Saturday and Sunday in Japan. The games were broadcast on Fuji TV, NHK BS and J Sports.
The Series also had viewership records in Canada, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Taiwan, according to MLB.
The World Series averaged 15.8 million viewers in the United States across Fox, Fox Deportes and streaming platforms, its best performance since 2017. This represents a 67% increase in viewership over the previous year when the Rangers Texas beat the Arizona Diamondbacks in five games to have the lowest average audience in series history, with 9.11 million.
Los Angeles was the most important market with a rating of 18.9 and share of 53, while New York was third with a rating of 12.4 and share of 41. San Diego was the second market with a rating of 12.4 and share of 41.
The rating is the percentage of households with television that watched the game and the share refers to the percentage of the audience that watched it all the time.
Fox and FS1 averaged 7.49 viewers during the playoffs, a 42% increase from the previous year, the best average in seven years.
