The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable contest averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The overall 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 drew 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
