The thrilling extra-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The overall World Series average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
