The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
