The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
