The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
