The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
