The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
