The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – 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 game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
