As a lifelong baseball fan, this World Series feels a little different. For the first time in a long time, the Yankees aren’t in the mix, but the Toronto Blue Jays are! It’s a welcome change and makes things a lot more interesting, honestly.
For Major League Baseball, that represents an opportunity.
With baseball hoping to become more popular globally and potentially including its best players in the 2028 Olympics, the recent strong viewership numbers for the World Series are a positive sign.
Shaikin: Blue Jays waited too long to walk Shohei Ohtani. Will it cost them a title?
In Game 3 of the World Series, the Toronto Blue Jays chose to intentionally walk Shohei Ohtani four times. However, before they did, Ohtani had an incredible performance, hitting four extra-base hits and making baseball history.
The first two games of the World Series were incredibly popular in Japan, with viewership nearly matching that of the United States, even though Japan’s population is much smaller. In Canada, viewership was ten times higher than it was for the same games last year.
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that the first two games of this year’s series averaged 30.5 million viewers across three countries. This is up from the 28.6 million average for the entire World Series last year.
A combined 32.6 million viewers in the U.S., Canada, and Japan watched Game 1, marking the largest audience for a Major League Baseball game in those countries since the final game of the 2016 World Series between the Cubs and Guardians.
Last year’s World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees, representing the two largest U.S. television markets, averaged 15.8 million viewers per game. The first two games of this year’s series drew an average of 12.5 million viewers on Fox networks, not including viewers in Canada.
Despite the lack of a U.S. team playing against the Dodgers, Fox reported that this year’s World Series ratings are the highest they’ve been since before the pandemic, excluding last year.
Dodgers
Will Klein struggled as a pitcher in the minor leagues, with an ERA over 5.00. But now, thanks to the unpredictable magic of October baseball, he’s become a memorable part of World Series history.
The NBA Finals this year, featuring teams from smaller cities – Oklahoma City and Indiana – averaged 10.3 million viewers in the United States.
As a huge baseball fan, I’m so excited about this year’s World Series! It’s Japan’s team – with incredible players like Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki – taking on Canada’s only major league team. What’s really amazing is that even though the games started at 9 a.m. in Japan, an average of 10.7 million people were tuning in to watch – that’s a dedicated fanbase!
Last year’s World Series averaged 720,000 viewers in Canada. This year, after just two games, that number has jumped to 7.2 million. Considering the U.S. has a population ten times larger than Canada’s, these Canadian viewership numbers are particularly impressive.
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2025-10-29 04:01