The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
