The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
