The thrilling extended matchup where the Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 drew a total 51 million viewers across the United States, Canada, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball announced this is the most-watched World Series Game 7 since the 1991 showdown between the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox channels, Fox Deportes and their digital services. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Dodgers and Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% increase compared to the last Game 7 featuring the Nationals and Houston Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was 7th, the fifth game came in 8th, and Game 3 landed in 13th position.
International Audience Figures
In the Canadian market, the game averaged over 11 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in Canada after the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final game began at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This followed the previous Friday’s sixth game – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six frames – recorded 13.1M spectators, making it the highest-rated World Series matchup on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a 2% rise from last year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the first time after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has seen audience increases for two consecutive years.
Including the opening game broadcast on Univision, the complete US average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels drew over 8 million viewers, an eight percent rise compared to the previous year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB stated that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
