The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate 51 million viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen viewership growth for two straight years.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
