The exciting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
