The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
