The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
