The exciting extra-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51M spectators in the US, Canada, and Japan territories. MLB reported this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Ratings Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew over 27 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game began at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12 million viewers. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where Fall Classic MVP Yamamoto allowed one run in six innings – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The full seven-game World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience growth for two straight seasons.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged over 8 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
