The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
