The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
