The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
