World Series Final Game Draws 51 Million Audience Members Across the US, Canada and Japan Regions.
The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
