The nail-biting extended clash where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
