The nail-biting 11-inning contest that saw the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB stated this marks the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 edition showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and Game 3 finished in thirteenth place.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game averaged 11.6M watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Patterns
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball reported that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
