The exciting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total over 50 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
