The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
