World Series Game 7 Captures Over 50 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canada and Japan Markets.
The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic finale since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.