The nail-biting extended clash where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a aggregate over 50 million spectators across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game secured 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement compared to the last finale featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
