World Series Final Game Captures 51 Million Viewers In the US, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
