The nail-biting extended contest that saw the Dodgers defeat the Toronto Blue Jays by one run averaged a total 51M watchers in the United States, Canada, and Japanese territories. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Details
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million audience members on Fox Sports channels, its Spanish-language channel and their streaming platforms. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It also stands as the most-watched Fall Classic game after the 2017 edition Game 7 involving the Dodgers and Astros, which drew over 29 million. This marks a 16% increase compared to the previous finale between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros, which attracted 23.19 million viewers.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, the fourth game was seventh, Game 5 came in eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Figures
In Canada, the climactic game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English-language program in Canada after the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM in the local time zone, it attracted 12 million viewers. This came after the previous Friday’s Game 6 – where World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six innings – averaged 13.1 million spectators, making it the most-watched World Series game on a sole broadcaster in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The full seven-game World Series drew 15.71M viewers on the Fox network, a two percent rise from the previous year’s Dodgers versus Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the Fall Classic has seen audience increases for two consecutive seasons.
Including the Game 1 telecast on the Univision network, the total US average reached over 16 million. The overall World Series average in the Japanese market was 9.7 million and 8.1M in Canada.
The full playoffs on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent rise over last year and Fox’s strongest postseason performance after 2017.
MLB announced that the World Series was televised in 203 countries and territories by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.