The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
