The nail-biting extended clash that saw the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. MLB stated this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured 27.33 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and Game 3 landed in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million watchers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
