The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
