The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
