The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
