The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
