Fall Classic Game 7 Attracts 51 Million Viewers Across the US, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
