The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. 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 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
