The exciting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
