The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million spectators across the US, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
