The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
