The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
