The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
