The nail-biting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-match series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the total US average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged over 8 million watchers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
