The nail-biting extra-inning contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball announced this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest between the Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable contest drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup since the 2017 edition final game between the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement over the previous finale featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed fourth, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 came in eighth, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Numbers
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English broadcast in Canada since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six innings – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Series Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series averaged over 15.7 million viewers on Fox, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the opening game telecast on the Univision network, the total American average was 16.1M. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1M in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by 44 media partners in 16 various languages.
