The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
