The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
