The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
