World Series Game 7 Attracts 51 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series finale since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
