The thrilling extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
