The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
