The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
