The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
