The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
