World Series Final Game Captures 51M Audience Members In the United States, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined over 50 million viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
