The nail-biting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
