The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
