The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
