World Series Final Game Captures 51 Million Audience Members In the United States, Canadian and Japan Markets.
The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
