Fall Classic Final Game Captures 51 Million Audience Members In the United States, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a combined over 50 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
