The thrilling extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
