The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
