The nail-biting extended clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to 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, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various languages.
