World Series Final Game Draws Over 50 Million Audience Members In the US, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The thrilling extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.