The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.