The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
