The nail-biting 11-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
