The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
