The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
