The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
