The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
