The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – drew over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
