The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
