The exciting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
