The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
