The exciting 11-inning matchup where the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a aggregate 51M watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this marks the most-watched World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic game averaged over 27 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This represents a 16% increase over the previous 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 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada since the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The entire seven-game series averaged 15.71 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American average reached over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in 16 different tongues.
