The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M viewers in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest secured over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
