The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
