The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also stands as the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen viewership increases for two consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
