The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase compared to last year and the network’s best postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different languages.
