The thrilling extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
