The thrilling extended clash where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
