The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a total 51 million watchers across the US, Canadian, and Japan markets. MLB announced this represents the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Atlanta Braves.
Television Ratings Details
The Saturday epic game drew 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports networks, Fox Deportes and Fox’s streaming platforms. Per Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It also is the top-rated World Series matchup after the 2017 final game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This marks a 16% improvement over the last finale featuring the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 placed 4th, the fourth game ranked 7th, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game finished in thirteenth place.
International Viewership Figures
In Canada, the game drew 11.6 million watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language program in the country after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it averaged 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto allowed one run in six frames – drew 13.1 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Trends
The full seven-game series drew over 15.7 million audience members on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This marks the initial instance after 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on Univision, the total American viewership reached over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The full MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels recorded 8.09 million watchers, an 8% rise compared to the previous year and the network’s strongest playoff ratings after 2017.
Major League Baseball reported that the Fall Classic was televised in 203 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen different languages.
