The thrilling 11-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise over last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
