The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
