The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
