The nail-biting extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a total over 50 million watchers in the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. Major League Baseball reported this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest secured 27.33 million audience members on Fox channels, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally is the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game placed 4th, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and Game 3 finished in 13th place.
International Audience Numbers
In Canada, the game recorded 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million. This came after last Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – drew 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in the country.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series drew over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a two percent increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the Fall Classic has recorded viewership growth for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was 16.1 million. The total World Series average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09 million viewers, an eight percent increase compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason ratings since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various languages.
