The nail-biting 11-inning matchup that saw the Dodgers overcome the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 attracted a aggregate 51 million spectators in the United States, Canadian, and Japanese territories. MLB reported this represents the highest-rated World Series Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Twins and Braves.
Broadcast Viewership Details
The Saturday memorable game drew 27.33M audience members on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and Fox’s digital services. According to ratings data, it was the second highest-rated broadcast of the previous week.
It additionally stands as the top-rated World Series game after the 2017 Game 7 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros, which averaged 29.07 million. This represents a 16% improvement compared to the last finale between the Washington Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19 million.
In the weekly rankings, Game 6 placed 4th, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was 8th, and the third game landed in thirteenth position.
Global Audience Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew 11.6M viewers on the Sportsnet network and the French TVA Sports. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest started at 9 PM local time, it averaged 12M. This followed last Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – averaged over 13 million viewers, making it the highest-rated Fall Classic matchup on a single network in Japan.
Series Totals and Patterns
The entire seven-game World Series averaged 15.71M viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from last year’s Dodgers versus Yankees matchup. This represents the initial instance after 2015 and ‘16 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive seasons.
Counting the opening game broadcast on Univision, the total American viewership was 16.1M. The overall Fall Classic average in the Japanese market was 9.7M and 8.1 million in Canada.
The complete playoffs on Fox, FS1 and FS2 drew 8.09 million viewers, an 8% increase over the previous year and the network’s best postseason performance since the 2017 season.
Major League Baseball stated that the World Series was televised in over 200 countries and territories by 44 media partners in sixteen various tongues.
