The nail-biting extended contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
