The nail-biting extra-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M watchers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th place.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the complete American average was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff performance since 2017.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
