The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various tongues.
