The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
