The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
