The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic game since the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over last year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
