The exciting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
