The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox 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 additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
