The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
