The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
