The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
