The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
