The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
