The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers 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 recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
