The nail-biting extended matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a aggregate over 50 million viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last Game 7 between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was 7th, the fifth game was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In Canada, the climactic game recorded 11.6M viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in the country since 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. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Overall Totals and Trends
The entire seven-match World Series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a two percent increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance since 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded viewership increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and Fox’s best playoff ratings after the 2017 season.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various languages.
