The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
