The exciting 11-inning clash where the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run drew a aggregate 51M viewers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 since the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Ratings Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic game secured over 27 million viewers on Fox Sports networks, its Spanish-language channel and Fox’s streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated program of the week.
It additionally is the most-watched Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 Game 7 involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07M. This marks a 16% improvement over the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million viewers.
In the Nielsen ratings, Game 6 ranked 4th, Game 4 ranked seventh, Game 5 came in 8th, and Game 3 finished in 13th position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game averaged 11.6 million viewers on Sportsnet and the French-language TVA Sports channel. This was the highest-rated English broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the deciding contest started at 9 p.m. in the local time zone, it attracted 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which World Series Most Valuable Player Yoshinobu Yamamoto allowed a single run in six frames – averaged 13.1M spectators, making it the most-watched Fall Classic game on a sole broadcaster in the country.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series recorded 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, 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 consecutive years.
Counting the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete American viewership was over 16 million. The total World Series viewership in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels drew 8.09M viewers, an eight percent rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by forty-four broadcasting partners in sixteen different tongues.
