The nail-biting extended contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million spectators in the US, Canada, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable contest drew over 27 million viewers on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase over the previous Game 7 featuring the Washington Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and the third game landed in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This made it the highest-rated English program in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the final game started at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – averaged 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game series recorded over 15.7 million viewers on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen viewership increases for two straight seasons.
Including the opening game broadcast on the Univision network, the total US average was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09 million watchers, an eight percent increase over last year and Fox’s strongest playoff ratings since the 2017 season.
MLB announced that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 broadcasting partners in 16 various languages.
