The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
