The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
