World Series Final Game Draws 51 Million Audience Members Across the United States, Canada and Japanese Regions.
The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB reported this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
