The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
