Fall Classic Game 7 Draws 51M Audience Members In the US, Canada and Japan Markets.
The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.