The exciting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
