The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
