The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
