The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
