The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
