The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, 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 World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various tongues.
