The nail-biting 11-inning contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a combined 51 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball reported this is the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 edition Game 7 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a sixteen percent increase compared to the last finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in eighth, and the third game finished in 13th place.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game recorded 11.6 million viewers 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 final contest began at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it drew 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game World Series averaged 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded viewership growth for two straight years.
Counting the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 averaged 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest postseason ratings after the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen different tongues.
