The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
