The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game drew 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over last year and Fox’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
