The exciting extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
