The exciting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
