The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
