The exciting extended clash where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
