The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a total 51M viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 edition final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various tongues.
