The exciting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
