The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
