The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
