The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
