The thrilling extra-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
