The thrilling extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
