The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
