The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
