Fall Classic Game 7 Attracts 51M Audience Members In the United States, Canada and Japan Markets.
The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series finale after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.