The thrilling extra-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a combined 51M spectators across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked 4th, the fourth game was seventh, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – drew 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason performance since the 2017 season.
MLB reported that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in 16 different languages.
