The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M spectators across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was over 16 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% rise over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
