World Series Final Game Draws 51 Million Viewers Across the United States, Canada and Japanese Markets.
The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
