The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
