The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series 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 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
