The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million 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 week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
