The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
