The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
