The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
