World Series Final Game Captures 51M Audience Members Across the US, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
