The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
