The exciting extended contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51M spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game drew over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
