The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million watchers in the US, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game ranked seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
