The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
