Fall Classic Final Game Captures 51 Million Viewers In the United States, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The thrilling extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
