World Series Game 7 Draws 51 Million Audience Members Across the US, Canadian and Japan Regions.
The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
