The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
