The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
