The nail-biting 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday epic contest averaged over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game since the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
