The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
