The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
