The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
