The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
