World Series Game 7 Draws Over 50 Million Audience Members In the US, Canadian and Japanese Regions.
The exciting extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series finale since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
