The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
