The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
