The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
