The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
