The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% 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 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
