The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
