The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million spectators in the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest secured 27.33M viewers on Fox networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the complete American viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
