The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada 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 averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership 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 viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
