The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
