The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
