The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
