The thrilling extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
