The exciting extended matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51M spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
