The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
