The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
