The exciting 11-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since 2017.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
