The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
