The thrilling 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
