The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest secured over 27 million viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached 16.1 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 various tongues.
