The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
