World Series Final Game Draws 51 Million Audience Members In the United States, Canada and Japan Markets.
The exciting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
