The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
