The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million viewers in the United States, Canadian, and Japan territories. MLB stated this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest between the Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday epic contest drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the first time after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership reached 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in 16 different tongues.
