The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
