The exciting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
