The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
