The thrilling extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
