The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
