Fall Classic Game 7 Draws 51 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The thrilling extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic finale since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different languages.
