The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
