The thrilling 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
