The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
