The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 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 recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
