Fall Classic Final Game Captures Over 50 Million Audience Members In the US, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
