The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
