The nail-biting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match series averaged 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
