The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
