The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
