The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
