The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began 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 MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
