The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
