The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program 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 followed last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
