The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
