The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
