The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 different languages.
