The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB reported this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
