Fall Classic Game 7 Draws Over 50 Million Audience Members In the US, Canadian and Japan Regions.
The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
