The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
