The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
