The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
