The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
