The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million 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 most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
