The nail-biting extra-inning clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
