The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
