The thrilling extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English program in the country after 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 the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
