World Series Final Game Captures Over 50 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canada and Japanese Regions.
The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American viewership was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
