World Series Final Game Captures 51 Million Audience Members In the US, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The exciting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.