The thrilling 11-inning clash that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays by one run attracted a combined 51M viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan markets. MLB reported this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched program of the previous week.
It additionally is the most-watched World Series matchup after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English program in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two straight years.
Including the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and the network’s strongest playoff performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
