The thrilling 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
