The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase over the previous finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
