The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
