The exciting 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in the country after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million watchers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance since the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
