The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
