The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
