The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
