The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
