Fall Classic Final Game Draws 51M Viewers In the United States, Canadian and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
