The exciting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
