The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
