The exciting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
