The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
