The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
