The thrilling extra-inning matchup where the Los Angeles Dodgers defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 averaged a combined 51M viewers across the US, Canadian, and Japan territories. Major League Baseball stated this is the most-watched Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 showdown featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s memorable game averaged 27.33M viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to Nielsen, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the week.
It additionally is the top-rated Fall Classic matchup after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07M. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last Game 7 between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, the sixth game ranked fourth, Game 4 ranked 7th, the fifth game was 8th, and the third game landed in 13th position.
International Viewership Figures
In the Canadian market, the climactic game drew 11.6M watchers on the Sportsnet network and the French-language TVA Sports. This was the most-watched English program in the country after the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In Japan, where the deciding contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This came after last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up a single run in six innings – recorded 13.1M viewers, making it the most-watched World Series matchup on a single network in Japan.
Overall Totals and Patterns
The full seven-match World Series averaged 15.71 million audience members on Fox, a 2% rise from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience increases for two straight years.
Counting the opening game telecast on Univision, the complete US viewership was 16.1M. The total Fall Classic average in Japan was 9.7M and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox, FS1 and FS2 recorded over 8 million viewers, an 8% rise over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance after 2017.
Major League Baseball announced that the World Series was broadcast in over 200 nations and regions by forty-four media partners in sixteen various languages.
