The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
