The exciting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
