The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
