The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
