The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest 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 Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
