The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
