The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
