The nail-biting extended matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American average was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
