The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
