The nail-biting extended clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million viewers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average was over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
