The thrilling extended clash where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
