The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
