The thrilling extra-inning contest that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run attracted a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. 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 single network in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series drew 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the total US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best playoff performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in 16 different tongues.
