The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
