The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
