The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
