The exciting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
