The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
