The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
