The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
