The thrilling extra-inning clash that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
