The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – 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 game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
