The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
