The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
