The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
