The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
