The exciting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase 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 the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
