The thrilling extended clash that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 drew a combined over 50 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. MLB announced this is the highest-rated World Series Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This marks a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the highest-rated English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding game started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match series averaged 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US viewership was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 different languages.
