The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
