The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. 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 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
