The nail-biting extra-inning clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
