The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M 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 stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
