The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
