The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
