The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
