World Series Final Game Draws 51M Audience Members In the US, Canada and Japanese Regions.
The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.