The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB stated this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
