The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
