The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
