The thrilling 11-inning contest where the Los Angeles Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a aggregate over 50 million watchers across the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball announced this represents the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 edition contest between the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their digital services. Per ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the most-watched World Series game since the 2017 edition final game involving the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged over 29 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which attracted 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game recorded over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This made it the highest-rated English broadcast in the country after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a single network in the country.
Overall Averages and Trends
The full seven-game series drew 15.71M audience members on the Fox network, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two straight years.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US viewership was over 16 million. The overall Fall Classic viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s best postseason ratings after 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen different tongues.
