The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
