The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
