The exciting extended matchup that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33M audience members on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and the network’s best playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
