The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB stated this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched program of the week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game since the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
