The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
