The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
