The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
