World Series Final Game Captures Over 50 Million Viewers In the US, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.